Schrödinger's Vampire
by The Divine Comedian
Summary: Monstrous Regiment. The army mislays a certain vampire corporal. The results aren't pretty, and no-one's so sure what the truth is, or how to deal with it. A story about trauma and its aftermath. Maladict, Polly, Clogston.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: It's all Terry Pratchett's.

**Summary:** The army mislays a certain vampire corporal. The results aren't pretty, and no-one's so sure what the truth is, or how to deal with it other than by smoking about a million cigarettes. A story about one trauma and its aftermath.

**Characters/ Pairings:** Polly/ Mal, Mal/ Clogston, the lads, OCs, Vimes, Angua, Margolotta.

**Rating & Warnings (for the whole story):** M (violence, torture, dark themes).

**More specific warnings (scroll past the horizontal line to skip):**

rape (physical, possibly mental), allusions to victim blaming (self and others), character death (of sorts), suicidality, self injury, coerced outing of sex, child abduction, strong hints at child abuse, post-traumatic stress, panic attacks, memory loss, eye injury, gunshot wounds, other injuries, starvation, forced drinking, power difference in relationship (not expanded upon), animal abuse, people being insensitive and sometimes crass about some of the aforementioned issues, and a lot of angst [I tried to include common warnings, but this list is probably not complete and may be updated with subsequent chapters. Feel free to ask more].

* * *

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 1**

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* * *

**

The sun was almost done setting when Mal pointed out the incredibly obvious.

"You appear to be fretting just a little, sarge," she said while discarding her red-and-white uniform in favour of the dark grey tunic and trousers more suitable to the occasion. Earlier that evening, she'd dared complain that there was no matching hat.

"Well, I happen to think this is a terrible idea," said Polly, who was watching the spectacle with a ledger on her knees. "You've got everything?"

"Dagger up my sleeve," said Mal with a gesture meant to demonstrate the fact. "Knife down my boot. I'm an awesome ninja vampire! Map. Round thing that explodes if I look at it funny."

On her list, Polly checked off the dagger, the knife and the round thing that exploded if Mal looked at it funny, then her pen hesitated. "What's a ninja?" she asked.

There was a moment of shared, lip-biting confusion. "An awesome person who has knives?" volunteered Mal.

Polly noted that down on on her other, inner list of Things Mal Had Picked Up In Her Flashsides, for the later use in beating the lads at scrabble, and nodded at her to continue.

"Small amount of money for bribing purposes -," said Mal. Coins jingled.

"- that's not on the list," said Polly. "How am I supposed to account for it?"

"Never mind," said Mal, "I volunteer it for the good of Borogravia, and also, the saving of my behind in the face of national bankruptcy ... Newfangled gunpowder firearm thingy, pack of cigarettes, no lighter. No lighter?"

Check, check, whoops. Where did the lighter go?

"Whoops," said Polly with some delay, "I took it to start the camp fire last night... there you go."

"Thank you... handkerchief, toothbrush..."

"Ooh. Fancy."

"_Comb_... hey, don't leave me hanging!"

"Coffee?" asked Polly. That was also not on the original list.

"Necklace," said Mal, and Polly mentally ticked it off. "Is that going to be enough?" she asked.

"It's enough for a week, and I figured if I'm not back after that, I'm buggered either way," said Mal, halfway through fastening her bootlaces.

"What are you going to do if you get there and they take the coffee away or you run out?" Polly asked. "Theoretically."

"What are you going to do if they rip out your toenails?" asked Mal. "And I see your theoretically and raise you an introspectively."

"There's a point in there, but it isn't very appetising."

"That's the price you've got to pay for the superpowers and flawless Uberwaldean," said Mal, braiding her hair with quick fingers. "I am the best person for the job, and you're not coming. Sergeant. It's much too dangerous. Got a ribbon?"

"I wouldn't want to come, and I don't want you to go either," said Polly, handing her a piece of string she'd fished out of her coat pocket. "It's a daft plan by a complete madman. Who was probably drunk at the time."

"It was Christine's idea, and she adores me" said Mal, "Fresh air'll do me good, and I'll be back soon, anyway. It's just their damn headquarters, how hard can they be to find?"

"One more word, and I'll deduct this mission from your paid leave," said Polly.

There was a meaningful glance on a pocket watch, a cocky grin. "You may now hug me goodbye... or, apparently, kiss me goodbye - well, soldier on! I'm not standing in the way of progress."

Polly stood back, whistling innocently, as if she hadn't just kissed her chatty friend on the cheek for luck.

"You _like_ me, sergeant," said Mal. It sounded rather gleeful, but maybe that was because she liked herself a chance to taunt.

Polly shrugged. "In a I-don't-particularly-want-you-to-die-sense, yes, I guess I do like you. Now get lost before you get conceited on me."

"A memory to keep me warm in my miserable Uberwaldean cell? Aw."

"If you absolutely have to leave, at least don't _joke_ about this." Polly felt her eyes narrowing. She was pretty sure she could keep her annoyance over Christine's clever plan and her polite puzzlement over these new and delicate developments in local vampire-human relations apart. She knew she'd be just as annoyed if it were Private Igor being sent away to snoop around behind enemy lines.

"What _will_ you do when you run out of coffee there?" she asked.

"Tell them everything I know," said Mal, shrugging. "You know how I am. I don't insist on patriotism in the face of undue hardship."

Polly got closer, so that her words would not be overheard by anyone listening outside of their tent. "Some advice from your superior," she said. "Don't you dare trying to be a hero."

"That's what _she_ said," said Mal. "Chris knows I've got flexible morals."

"Clogston talking sense, who'd have thought," said Polly, passing up a chance to inquire as to the nature of Clogston's apparent introduction to Mal's morals. "You sure you're not taking more coffee than that?"

A shadow fell over Mal's face, just a hint of seriousness as she evidently chose not to say out loud what they both knew: if she were to be captured, sanity would be a disadvantage.

"I'll be back in five days and then you may peck me on the cheek all night long," said Mal, ducking under the canvas and out of the tent. "Don't _worry_ so much. I must have done this a thousand times."

"Oh, bugger off already, and no," said Polly, as Mal disappeared into the dark with a winning smile and a little bow. "More like twice," she added, when the dark had swallowed her up.

The dreams that Polly had that night were worryingly sexual in theme, but focused on some weird sentimental aftermath that she wasn't possibly going to disentangle while asleep. She woke up several times, with the lingering desire to take the hand of the person next to her and press a drowsy kiss on her fingers and maybe go from there; it was gone soon and anyway she woke up next to nobody and was glad for a few seconds that she didn't have to share this vague sweatiness, here, where nothing was ever kept private; and every time she was hit with the fact that her slightly telepathic vampire tentmate was Not There for a somewhat more problematic reason than a three a.m. coffee break.

She was worried a little. The dreams may be a symptom of simple vampire overdose, or maybe even just a soldier thing, but the feeling of rejection she'd felt whenever her overly adventurous corporal was being, well, overly adventurous, when, how, and with whom she desired - while she was refusing tu put a name to it, she figured it was probably okay to miss Mal already.

Polly lit a candle and tried reading a book for a while. It was a tiny and scandalous little volume of the sort that Polly wouldn't be caught dead reading; she'd got on their last vacation back in the capital, had hauled it along since then and was going to haul it along for a little while longer, until Mal's birthday in two months when it would finally be her turn to carry the dratted extra baggage. But try buying a present out in the prairie sometimes. She just hoped she'd get the chance of giving it to Mal.

Five days were nothing, she told herself.

* * *

Somewhere between then and now, a cat becomes too curious, starting a chain of events that will ultimately lead to its untimely death at the hand of man, and thus is more a chain of decisions, and only some of them innocent. The cat, attracted by the impossible, decides to wriggle through underneath one of many metal bars as part of its well-loved spineless wonder routine, and goes to sit on a sleeping figure's face.

* * *

Later, at the tail-end of another hefty round of debriefing with the ruperts, Polly thought of the great Klatchian philosopher Zero who had discovered the number zero, who would have said that if five days were nothing, so were ten days, and then, so were twenty. Or even - she looked once again at the delicately wrought clock above the transportable mantelpiece in the conference tent - twenty-one now.

She was beginning to understand why Zero's discovery had been the subject of ridicule for so long. You couldn't even divide by it.

"... few casualties, but we will have to redistribute a few regiments as soon as possible," a clerk said. "Sergeants are responsible for replacing corporals, all other promotions will be decided on by this board. Any questions?"

The sergeants were bloody and tired and the procedure was very consistent in its lack of surprises, and they didn't have any questions.

"Fine, then if you would just step over here to pick up the letter blanks; there's one for each casualty reported -"

In the ensuing shuffle surrounding the stack of paper, Polly was held back by Major Clogston, who - dear sweet Nuggan, there was a place and _time_, she thought - was holding a sandwich, though at least not currently eating, and asked her to stay back for a while after the meeting.

Polly didn't want to stay behind. She'd planned to have a quiet evening in her tent, maybe to get a head start on those few death notifications before all the post-battle numbness wore off, or alternatively, to dive into the the icy cold water of the nearby mountain lake and have a go at the regimental record for staying underwater without coming up for air (the record was currently at one minute, forty-two seconds and would have been higher if not for the cold; the lads always complained having a vampire corporal held them up to unrealistic standards). But she didn't see an opportunity to sneak off, and thus, when she'd received her four letter forms, fresh from their transportable press, and all the soldiers had cleared off, she actually sat down with Clogston at the now seemingly huge, yet collapsible, conference table.

She opened her mouth to answer the question she thought was going to be asked, but then re-adjusted her degree of cooperation, and simply waited while Clogston got out a stack of neat hand-written notes and a quill.

"So," said Clogston, "I am currently writing a conclusive report for the general."

"That's nice," was what Polly almost replied, but thought better of. Instead she said, "You think we're done here?"

"Colonel Bergmann seems to think so," said Clogston, "I'm still trying to reason with him. What are _your_ conclusions regarding the attack today?"

"My _what_ - ?" said Polly, unbelieving and possibly still surfing on the edge of an adrenaline rush. "It was a vile and unprovoked attack on our brave -"

Clogston looked at her over the top of her spotless glasses. "Polly," she said, with emphasis.

Polly sighed. "All right," she said. "At first I thought they were just terribly disorganised, but then I thought they were just surprised and not dealing well, even though they were the surprise attackers, I mean. I noticed they'd put up all their heavy weaponry on the eastern side - their eastern, not ours - as if they were expecting someone, _then_ our secret reinforcements hit them from northwest, and that was that."

"So, what you're saying is," Clogston said, "that they just didn't plan very well and thus lost two thousand men in under five hours?"

"After they'd played hide and seek for two months now?" said Polly. "Bugger that. They were very well prepared, but for a completely different situation. And of course, we had the guns. I think that helped."

Clogston ticked off something on her sheet, but Polly found it was too dark to read it upside down without being really obvious about it. Then Clogston looked up and smiled, and Polly, who had never been to a school, nevertheless felt like a teacher was commanding her for answering a particularly tricky question exactly right.

Well, Polly was nothing if not forward. "Also, they only brought part of their army," she added.

All through their short conversation, Clogston had been taking notes, but now she compared them to a colour-coded chart. "That last bit," she said. "How did you figure that out?"

"It's more of a speculation," said Polly. "But I got some of the lads to note down the Uberwaldeans' identification numbers. And all the regiment numbers are either smaller than four or even, see -" she borrowed a piece of paper from Clogston to demonstrate what exactly she meant, even though it wasn't a particularly complex thought.

"Yes," said Clogston, "but this _is_ the Uberwaldean army we're talking about -"

"I thought so, too, but the personal identifiers -" she pointed towards the last three digits making up each number, "- are both odd and even, so I don't think it's just the Uberwaldeans being... particular about counting things."

It was a bit silly, Polly thought, but at least they divided their forces by regiments. The Borogravians usually went by last names, she'd found out that one time when unfortunately she'd been forced to raise hell once when she and Mal, whose last name started with a B, had almost been deployed to different fronts.

Clogston furrowed a brow, taking in the jotted-down numbers again. "That's a happy thought," she said. "One army down, one army of roughly the same size still to go."

"Yeah," said Polly, "and we're about as far from finding their headquarters as we were three weeks ago. Funny." What she didn't mention was that they'd have been floored if the Uberwaldeans had only brought everyone. It was more than a little strange.

"I shall remember to write a note to the general about this," said Clogston, infuriatingly, and closed her folder. "And I'll put in a word about you in our board meeting. Now, while we're at it, have you heard from Corporal Maladict?"

"If I had," said Polly, "I would have reported to you already."

Clogston noted something down. "I have no interest in rumours, sergeant," she said.

"Ah," said Polly after waiting for her to continue. Apparently some encouragement was needed.

"So you'll understand that this is strictly out of curiousity," said Clogston. "Is it true that the corporal has been planning to desert?"

"Yeah, I heard that too." Polly wasn't even attempting to lie; after all, it had been Mal who had started the rumours in the first place. The army could be a very boring place for even the most easily entertained vampire when all you did for a month was marching. Feeding the rumour mill was one of Mal's favourite pastimes.

"However," Polly added, "that's completely unfounded. Just idle talk." she insisted, praying to to the powers that were that Clogston, of all people, wasn't going to insist on an explanation for her conviction. Because she liked Mal and had missed her terribly and had harbored the hope Mal wouldn't just up and leave. Not now. Not when their friendship had been on the verge of becoming the most important thing in a world, and the world, in turn, was descending into sheer madness once again.

Typical, she'd thought, just when their government of warmongers had finally decided peace was an at least theoretically acceptable policy, Borogravia had to find itself under attack. Perfect.

"Good," said Clogston. "You don't think the Uberwaldeans captured him, either, I gather?"

"No," said Polly. "As you are no doubt aware of, their intelligence is rather effective in extracting information from prisoners. The attack today would have gone over differently. I mean, all they'd have to do was ambush our secret reinforcements properly and we'd have been, presumably, toast." Much as all wars were the same, Polly thought, all wars were different; and one fact about war with the Uberwaldeans was, they captured you, you talked, and later you'd refuse to talk about it. They weren't fuzzy with these things.

Of course, even if she were to be considering the inconceivable, that Mal had been captured and had somehow managed to ignore their methodical persuasion in order to tell them one or several clever little lies that would ultimately save the Borogravian army from untimely wipeout... as soon as news from the battle reached their elusive headquarters, that'd be it. No more sarcastic little vampire. If she was lucky.

"Right," said Clogston, "what you're saying is that the corporal got lost on the way back?" and suddenly Polly gained some understanding on why people tended to hate her, and some more surprise as to what ever Mal had seen in that woman. There was quite a lot of surprise already.

"No," said Polly, again, suddenly thankful for the remaining mindless bravery taking the edge off the impact of her thoughts, "what I'm saying here is that I think," _hope_, "the corporal is dead." There was an uncomfortable pause. "That's kind of an Uberwaldean specialty. Disposing off vampires, I mean," she added out of a very tired kind of malice.

What she was waiting for was a refute of some kind, but it never came. "I fear you may be right," said Clogston, and for the first time Polly noticed that all the years of responsibility, of deploying forces, often sending them to their death and then writing reports about it, must have taken _some_ toll on Clogston; even though she was better at this than most. It was the kind interest in their well-being that did it; somewhere along the lines the dark rings under her eyes had become permanent.

Polly filed that thought under Inappropriate Musings on Major Clogston's Face. Was the day ever going to end?

"I've looked at his file," added Clogston, "and it is pretty fragmentary. Who are you going to send the notification to?"

_It's your fault and you can write the damn thing yourself_, thought Polly, and she may have said it out loud, but natural distrust at ruperts made her, even now, act with at least rudimentary care. "I know he has a mother," she said, "but she's a little -"

"Evil?" guessed Clogston. Maybe Mal had told her, too. "Vampires do have strong family bounds, though. It would be unfair to -"

Or maybe Mal hadn't.

"Oh, she loves Mal all right," said Polly. It was the truth, and majors didn't have to know everything. Like the fact it was a rather twisted kind of love that stole small children and pampered them all the way to adulthood and turned them on the night of their twenty-first birthday; the kind of love that probably needed a different label, after all. "I don't want her to know my name, though," added Polly, "especially not in relation to the death of her baby. It's a survival instinct, can't help it." That, and Mal hadn't cut family ties, really. She'd pulverised them.

Clogston shrugged so nonchalantly that Polly wasn't sure she had even been serious with her suggestion. "That would be all, then, Perks," she said. "Go get get some sleep, there'll be a lot of marching tomorrow."

Polly got up from her chair and was in the process of walking out without another work when Clogston called, "Oh, and Polly?"

She turned in the tent opening.

"I am sorry how this turned out," said Clogston, and it did sound sincere. The sentiment failed to bring Mal back, though.

"Yeah," said Polly, "and it was such a clever plan, too." With that, she left, took the long walk through the rows of tents toward her own, empty one, for the umpteenth time in as many hours contemplating the ifs and hows, the possibilities, and (seeing how it was Mal) the impossibilities; she clumsily lit up a cigarette and arrived, once again, at the same conclusion.

Even if Mal _was_ alive somewhere, she'd have reverted by now.

* * *

Pay close attention to the cat. The cat is dead, and has been dead for two days now. One could argue that more important things have happened along the multiverse's multiple time axes. _This is a question of perspective._

There's no _fun_ in petting a dead cat.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Things get a little gory in here, sry.

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**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 2**

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**

Two weeks later, the sound of gunshots broke through the otherwise solemn silence of a fort that had just been taken over in a sneaky night-time operation and discovered mostly empty. The Uberwaldeans had left a bunch of underlings to keep things running, but none of them should have shot anyone or anything. It was, therefore, cause for distress; and naturally, Polly had been ordered to figure this out.

"It's coming from the south wing of the fort," said Polly, after a drawn-out minute of running around in the courtyard of the fort looking for the source of the sounds, which seemed to come from everywhere at once, and missing her vampire's sensitive ears. "Any idea what it might be?"

"Thoundth like one of ourth," said Private Igor, who in the midst of the forcible takeover had looked a bit out of place but was starting to ease in again in the aftermath. "Handgun?"

"They don't have any," said Polly, and thought, _unless Lofty delivers to them, too_, "and anyway, it's too regular." She had counted a slow six when it started, then a pause, then six again. Pause. "For the love of -," she said. "They've surrendered. Nobody should be shooting at anyone. We don't have the _time_ for a court martial."

Polly's primary orders were to see to it that in the aftermath of the takeover everything went in an orderly fashion, and she decided to start by spreading orderliness and fear of authority in the south wing. "Igor, get the Privates Smith and Klein and meet me at the entrance." Then, with some delay, a thought hit her. "And bring your first aid kit, we may need it," she added. Guns had the distressing property of usually being pointed at people.

* * *

While you're considering cats, consider a box, too. Leave it for a few days, and then open it.

* * *

Polly and her small squad arrived in a severely downstairs place that had apparently been the source of the shooting, and, until half a minute ago, of the sound of people shouting for help, which was a disconcerting sound to make out when you were already racing down the stairs, and an even more disconcerting sound when, voice by voice, it died away. The silence, now, was clearly getting to everyone, and when Smith and Klein returned from the first two cells on the left side of a seemingly endless subterranean corridor with the news that someone had apparently shot the prisoners, she wasn't even surprised, but sent them out to get reinforcements. This couldn't have been a clean job.

"This doesn't even make any sense," she called to Igor, who examined one barely-alive prisoner only to have him die five seconds into the ministrations while she was in the corridor on the lookout for a madman with a gun. She suspected he - or possibly she - was hiding in one of the cells, as there was no apparent way out other than the staircase they'd come from. Maybe the corridor made a bend on the other end, but she couldn't see that far.

There was probably a more intelligent course of action, like closing off one or both ends - as the case may be - of the corridor off until the reinforcements arrived, of course. But Igor had insisted.

"No sense at _all_," Polly emphasised. "Guns are a wonderful technology and all, but _they don't have it_."

Igor's voice was rather dry for his species when he replied, "The bullet I retrieved ith _definitely_ one of ourth, tharge. Thee? They're tho cheap they rutht."

"Oh, _grand_," said Polly, stepping into the cell without really wanting to. She already knew what they looked like; blood and deformation didn't make them prettier.

In the army, sudden outbursts of meaningless violence - apart from the obvious instances - didn't exactly happen often. Which didn't mean they never happened, either. _But why the prisoners?_ thought Polly. Usually soldiers who lost it were content to lose it on their mates. They were more accessible, for one. Not an ounce of sense to this violence.

In hindsight, she should have guessed that the shooter had been listening in on them, and decided to take his chances before the reinforcements arrived. Maybe then they could have captured him and maybe, maybe, could have had a chance of disentangling truth from untruth later. But as it were, she heard movement in the corridor, ran out to see a man who, in this darkness, was _probably_ wearing enemy colours, emerging from a cell, gun pointing straight at her, at least until he stumbled backwards over a stray cat. Bang.

She was the faster one, and that was it. The cat ran, the man fell forever.

Polly walked towards the scene, vaguely trying to unclench her lungs that were holding a breath hostage. Behind her, Igor got up and hauled his first-, second- and third-aid-kit over one shoulder. She heard the reinforcements arriving as she got down to check the man's pulse while her brain was busy processing something that didn't make any sense. Not that there'd been a lot of that so far.

"Tharge?" said Igor. "Your thoroughness ith motht admirable, but - " He gestured, clearly indicating the state of the man's head. Sometimes she got the feeling he'd made her his apprentice.

"Oh great, a sarcastic Igor," said Polly, prying an object from the man's unresisting left hand. It was a knife, half attached to a concealed knife holster in his sleeve - much like the one Mal had been wearing. She held it up to the dim light of the flickering oil lamps, and it was slick and shiny with blood.

It didn't make sense. The man had a gun. The gun was Borogravian. The man had a knife which had been recently used, even though he had a gun for this very job, _and_ the knife was Mal's. The gun, too.

She hadn't dared to dream anymore. Now it appeared futile.

"For fuck's sake," she said, while having the presence of mind to snatch a set of keys from the man's belt. Slowly, she turned her head towards the cell entrance to her left, and beyond.

The light from the corridor didn't quite illuminate the scene, which was just as well because the scene was depressing. There was the same ancient, stained mattress with a threadbare, never washed grey blanket that she'd seen in some of the other cells, a dirty rag on the floor next to it, a rusty bucket with a cover, and not much else, except for a crouched down slight figure with ber back against the wall, and all around her a spreading pool of what was, here, liquid darkness.

"Igor, _wait_," she called. The other soldiers had caught up with them. "Look for survivors, and get them upstairs," she told them before following Igor into the cell. Maybe she was just disgruntled because he beat her to it.

Igor, after having taken one look at the motionless figure, rummaged around in his kit.

"Is he alive?" she asked.

"Can't tell yet," said Igor shortly. He'd retrieved one of his special candles and lit it. Suddenly everything was brighter and more terrible. Mal's head was slumped forward, long strands of matted dark hair obscuring sight, and probably for the best. Igor brushed some of it away with one hand and lifted her head up to get a better look.

Logically, Polly had known that this much blood must be coming from somewhere, and probably not from a nick in the finger. But this abstract knowledge hadn't prepared her for the sight of Mal's throat gaping open, slashed deeply to the bone from side to side. She recoiled.

_And why the blindfold?_ she thought weakly. It seemed so cruel.

"You don't _have_ to thtay," said Igor, getting out a lengthy piece of bandage which was immediately soaked, and stabilised Mal's neck with more of the same. For a moment Polly considered running. The thought was ultimately rejected.

"Any way I can make myself useful?" she asked.

"Try and get the lockth open, then," said Igor, and Polly set to work on the chains on Mal's hands, which were firmly attached to the wall, trying out key after key without success until a terrible thought hit her.

"Igor?" she said. "Is this safe?"

There were details she'd been able to ignore for almost a minute. But they seemed important, like the perfect vampiric bite marks on Mal's fingers and wrists and forearms. The cellars were chilly, but there were beads of sweat still drying on Mal's forehead; they couldn't have been more than a few minutes too late. That would be an interesting thought to ruminate over at night.

And too late for what?

Polly suddenly felt sick. It had been almost five weeks now, and Mal had stupidly carried coffee for five days. Fuck necklaces, she thought, she'd make her wear full-body chain armour from coffee beans, if only Mal'd make it alive and sane...

Igor, in the meantime, had been carefully working to lift the extremely tight blindfold. He took one look at what was underneath it - Polly wished she hadn't shared it - and then gently but firmly replaced it.

"He'll live," he said, "but he won't wake up until Thunday at leatht. Enough time to get prepared." It didn't sound too hopeful.

The next key did it. Mal's thin arms fell, toneless and heavier than they looked, and Polly had to grab her shoulders in order to keep her body from collapsing to the ground.

It was an awful thought, but it was there: for a moment, Polly considered taking up the stake and hammer that were lying right there on the ground and just finish the job they'd clearly interrupted, instead of cruelly delaying it for another three days. That was the kind of dignity that Mal had requested from her, and the situation then hadn't even seemed quite as clear-cut as this. Now, even her treasured boots were missing; her naked feet, formerly immaculate, were bruised and cut-up and dirty.

But more than that, Polly thought, Mal deserved another chance; at least the knowledge that she got out in the end, or, more to the point, the knowledge who it was that'd kill her in the end. Polly didn't know if this was the kind or just the egoistic thing to do, she just knew she wasn't going to give her up yet.

Together, they heaved her onto Igor's foldable stretcher, and after a moment's thought Polly covered her body in her own long overcoat, even though the damp cold in this cellar probably wasn't bothering Mal right now. She'd trained the lads well, she thought, and all in all they were quite knowledgeable in the myriad ways soldiers went about humiliating both men and women rather indiscriminately, but apart from Igor, she didn't trust any of them not to wonder about the fact that Mal had been made to wear this shapeless grey skirt.

* * *

The night was getting on, and still there was no end in sight. It was Polly's own damn fault, she had to admit; she had offered to help Private Igor, partly because he had worked two shifts that day alone, and partly because, with the questionable exception of Christine, Polly was the only one who already knew about the general shape of Mal's body. In theory, at least.

With all these rationalisations in place and even though Igor was adamant about the fact that all of Mal's wounds were to be cleaned and bandaged and, especially, all blood washed away before Mal got as much as a single vampiric brain wave, which may happen rather sooner than later, it still felt like one single giant invasion of privacy and they'd only removed Mal's tunic so far.

She voiced that thought to Igor, who, rather than engaging in a 6 a.m. discussion of medical ethics, offered her to finish the job alone. But seeing how there were about a dozen patients there that Igor'd have to tend to as soon as he'd sorted out Mal's throat and eyes, and how he was actually taking runs inbetween to see to soldiers who'd become unstable in the meantime, Polly resorted to working in silence. She'd cut away the sleeves of Mal's shirt, which was sticking to her skin in many places. Polly had taken over the task of cleaning out the multiple bites and other wounds on Mal's arms with a strange-smelling blue liquid and bandaging them up using pieces of gauze the way Igor had shown her.

It felt like an extraordinarily futile task, like spraying perfume to put out a fire, like still negotiating politely when the situation really warranted a "fuck this, I'm going home". Hope was a beautiful thing, and she sure hoped that Igor knew what he was doing, but Mal was as clearly dead as all the others she'd buried so far.

At one point Polly lifted her head to the most delicate sight she'd ever seen, as Igor was just finishing sewing together bits and pieces on Mal's throat. The blood flow having stopped completely, it looked like an exhibit in a chamber of curiousities.

"What do you think caused _that_ bit?" She pointed to a strange pattern of blistered dark patches on the inside of Mal's elbows.

Igor put his instruments away for the moment and took a long hard look at them. "Lookth like chemical burnth," he said. "Could be cauthed by any number of thingth. Holy water ith the eathietht to acquire, but it could be any houthehold corrothive, really. Dithinfect and cover."

Huh, thought Polly bitterly. Might as well cover Mal whole and call it a day. She carried on. When Igor went to take off the blindfold again, Polly was rather too slow to avert her eyes in order to not get a second glimpse of this particular nightmare.

"I'm going to kill the motherfucker who did this," she said conversationally, and nearly tore the piece of gauze in her hands.

Igor shrugged. "Maybe you already did," he said.

"Now that thought will keep me warm tonight," said Polly, and then noticed the tentative ray of morning sunlight making its way through the window. There went this night's sleep.

Igors were anti-violence in general, but this one didn't seem to mind much. "You may want to not watch thith bit," he said. "I'm going to have to ecthtract what'th left."

"Thought you weren't taking souvenirs anymore - joke! It was a joke!" said Polly. A joke that'd had to get out, that or she was going to sob.

"Ha ha," said Igor dutifully.

The next bit was probably disgusting, but Polly didn't watch, and fortunately Igor was quick about it, soon placing a clean white bandage where the old sodden blindfold had been.

"I have to thee to the otherth now," said Igor, "but do call me if you need help with a fiddly bit." Polly nodded, not looking forward to the next few hours. Igor added, "do build a fire in the crate before you remove hith clothes; hypothermia will stop the healing prothethth. I athked the laundry to have them thend up a thet of clean clotheth."

"Tell them to knock," said Polly, and got to work.

* * *

She'd been persuading the armful of springy wood in the crate to burn just a little higher for quite a few minutes now when someone made their presence known by knocking. Dreading a certain someone who went by the name of Clogston, Polly made sure that Mal was decent, and opened the door.

"Oh no, not _more_ reports," said Polly, blocking the doorway somewhat and thinking that she should really be getting out of the habit of being aggressive at Major Clogston. This _was_ the army, after all.

"No reports for now," said Clogston, "I'm just nosy. How's the corporal?"

"Still dead," said Polly. "Also, injured."

"Ah," said Clogston.

"Sorry," said Polly, "you live with a vampire, you start thinking conversations like this are normal. There's been some healing, and Igor seems to think that he'll wake up. Or, uh, at least that something will wake up."

"You know, Polly," said Clogston conversationally, "your superiors have had really long days, too. How do you plan on keeping yourself and the others safe?"

_Something will wake up._ Polly wasn't really accustomed to Ruperts actually listening to the words she said. "I was thinking, I don't know, maybe chains?" she volunteered.

Oh, Mal would _love_ this.

"Just as long as you've got something planned," said Clogston.

"I also keep a stake ready," said Polly, just to see Clogston flinch, who she knew had taken to Mal and was genuinely worried about her well-being, only apparently not enough to not send her off to certain death.

"Find someone else to fill in for you if you can't do it," said Clogston. Clearly Polly had underestimated her cold, cold heart.

"Nah, I somehow feel _responsible_," said Polly. The battle of cold hearts was on!

It was seven in the morning, after all. And at least if she was degraded she wouldn't have to look for someone to replace Mal, because she could do it herself.

"You _did_ voice your objections to this particular mission very clearly," said Clogston. "And I know it is hard to see your friends go - instead of, say, that random private whose name you've always mispronounced - "

Oh, cold hearts, indeed.

"But there is a reason I sent Corporal Maladict," Clogston continued, "and that was because he was the only one who had even a small shot at succeeding, and in a way, he did, because we haven't been wiped out. Personal feelings cannot play into this."

"I _understand_ this, but -" began Polly. Some sentences, though, were easier to start than to end. _I understand this, but there's a difference between personal feelings and common decency? I understand this, but find it telling that you feel the need to explain yourself to a sergeant?_ Unless she wanted to spend the rest of her career saluting to the privates -

"I hope you do," said Clogston, "because I did suggest you for promotion."

Oh.

Despite the oh, Polly was still going to stand up for Mal, who she felt had been wronged. She wasn't going to be appeased with just promotions. "Do excuse me now," she said. "I have to figure out something about Mal's fingers, I think they've mended wrong..."

Clogston didn't actually wince. "Shall I put that down as 'stick it up your jumper'?"

Polly stared straight ahead, knowing she'd crossed a line.

"But for some elusive reason," added Clogston, "I really hope you'll reconsider."


	3. Chapter 3

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 3**

**

* * *

**

Polly's next shift started pretty much immediately after she was done sorting out her corporal's various injuries and cleaning her up as best as she could. Everything else was either for Private Igor to figure out or could safely wait until Mal woke up or at least showed the one or other vital sign. Like a heartbeat, for example.

Polly supposed they could be glad Mal at least wasn't decomposing.

After pondering the flexibility of army schedules vs. the appeal of saying something like, say, "Lieutenant Perks", she decided to go for the shift, but grab a mug of tea and maybe some porridge in the fort's kitchen first, where over the maybe-some-porridge Igor told her of his latest pursuits in the field of turning coffee into something that could be injected intravenously. The whole kitchen smelled strongly of his experiments, and for a moment it made her miss Mal so much she couldn't even say. She didn't finish her porridge.

There was this to say about sleep deprivation: the day _did_ go by in a haze - getting the fort sorted out, organising their losses. Polly caught herself composing long-winded reports in her mind whenever she was walking from one brainlessly executed task to another; and it was a very big fort, so the mental reports got longer and longer until she had to admit to herself her thought processes weren't making anything even resembling sense any more. And she still had two hours to go on her shift.

Then Clogston hinted that they may have to stay here a little longer than planned in order to take care of a bit of a diplomatic situation, _possibly_ involving Ankh-Morpork, _definitely_ involving reports, and after arrangements with the quartermaster, Polly set up office in a room up on the sixth storey of the south wing. It was possibly a square inch or so larger than Mal's cell had been, but it had high windows and a chair and a desk and an adjacent room about half as big, the floor of which was packed with heaps of files. None of them were interesting, but maybe she could use them in the fireplace.

The first thing she did was setting up her pallet and blanket on the largest connected bit of floor in the room, with the head end underneath the desk - if she hadn't been so darned tired, she may have noticed the critical error. Then she sat down at the table, got out her writing case, put her forms and the quills on the table and shuffled them around a bit, and with one glance from the blank paper in front of her to the blank sky on the other side of the window, she began to hyperventilate.

She did stuff her fist into her mouth and told herself sternly not to overreact, because overreacting lead to bad decisions, but found she wasn't very convincing about it. The next time she experienced a clear thought, it felt like several minutes later, and in any case that thought was somewhere along the lines of _what a day, what a day_, to the tune of her heart that was just now slowing down. She'd hoped to find Mal all this time, even though it hadn't been a particularly lively hope in the end, and now that she'd found her, she wished she hadn't. Viewed from a distance, her former uncertainty seemed so much more attractive.

Polly crumpled the topmost piece of paper and threw it against the wall, and then she decided to screw the last hour of her shift and go straight to bed.

Considering the general theme of the last thirty-six hours, she'd expected fretful sleep and gross dreams, and she wasn't disappointed. Even as she closed her eyes, she knew there was a whole pond of dreams in varying intensities that threatened to overflow as soon as she got even close to falling asleep, but then, what dream was creepier than reality these days? She drifted off, and then there were voices.

_I was thinking chains_, said one, clearly and cheerfully, and Polly was left wondering for a while why she couldn't get a video signal on this dream, and the dream went on and the voices went away and nothing happened at all for hours except once, when a thing that smelled like a cat crept around the legs of the table she was lying on, until it, too, lost interest and left her alone.

_Wait_, said someone, possibly her inner dream auditor, _you're not lying on a table, you're lying on the floor, quite reasonably. - Shut up_, Polly told them, _this is a table, I know because they talked about it -_

She tried to move her arms, but they wouldn't budge, they were heavier than this mortal world. She tried to breathe and needles moved in her throat, as if someone had safety pinned her together in unlikely places, like a rag doll. She tried to open her eyes, but didn't find any, and thought, _oh_.

Sleepily, she considered panicking, but she was too used to this state.

_Well_, thought Polly, _dreaming about lying down unmoving is not the worst way to spend a nightmare_, at least she'd be rested in the morning; at which point she came to touch with the utter, unreasonable enormity of it all, and woke up not screaming, but with a bit of a squeak that was immediately, still mid-squeak, re-attributed to having hit her head on the table above her. A word was still on her lips; her own name.

_Stupid careless little vampire_, she thought, fuming, as she crawled out of the warm pile of blankets and rubbed her head. Dawn had only just started to creep over the mountain tops in the distance; the morning had a good hour's sleep still in it, but at the same time she had a feeling that Mal needed company right now.

She may not have acted on the feeling if she hadn't been so very tired still.

Upon her arrival in the makeshift hospital wing (two adjacent conference rooms that had been stocked with mattresses) the thought had lost much of its urgency, and she felt silly. It could barely be called Sunday. She couldn't see how Mal could be anything else than twenty-four hours ago; if she'd learned anything in her short career in the Borogravian army, it was that death was usually more permanent than this.

"I had a weird feeling about the corporal," she therefore said grumpily upon the sighting of Private Igor, who was wearing a nightcap and apparently keeping himself awake with the result of one of his failed attempts at coffee distillation.

Igor shrugged. "There hath been thome improvement of the unthpectacular kind," he said, "and altho I _think_ I nailed the ethpreththo infuthion, I'm jutht waiting for actual blood pressure to turn up tho I can try it out. Should be interethting."

Polly thought for a moment. She guessed Mal was in hands so capable they'd served several generations well, and so Polly's actual attendance wasn't needed. But Mal _was_ her friend, right? And while Polly hadn't had much experience in the field of deep and/ or meaningful friendships, she expected that the desire to fret at the other's death- and/ or sickbed, whichever it was, was probably not wildly inappropriate.

Still. "Can I visit him?" she asked. Of course, she was the sergeant, but she had long ago learned to rely on her private for medical proficiency and also, manners.

Igor shrugged again. "I don't think he'll notithe," he said. "But call me if he doeth thomething interethting." At the look of her face he clarified, "Like twitching, or thomething."

The light of the early morning sun had now finally reached the lower storeys and was slowly pouring into the smaller room as Polly closed the door behind her.

She already knew it was pointless. Mal wasn't awake and locked inside her unresponding body, she was clearly elsewhere Polly could see that now. But still, she tried to tell Mal that it was okay, and that she was safe now, and about how warm it was in here, possibly the only heated room in the fort right now, eh, and then something inane about the bird population in the surrounding woods, and then she stopped, because her voice sounded stupid and hollow in the small room, and full of false hope. So she sat down on a wooden chair and watched for a while.

Igor was right, there _had_ been some improvement, she noticed as the light got better. The dark bruises on the side of Mal's face had taken a definite step in the general direction of green. Who knew when she had acquired those; once upon a time they'd have been gone after an hour.

Improvement schmimprovement. The vampire was still not breathing, and although Polly knew that Mal wasn't technically required to, she had made it a dear habit. Polly reached out her hand to touch Mal's hair, but stopped. It seemed so superfluous now; she'd already cleaned and braided it the day before.

What was she even doing in here, thought Polly, suddenly. Mal wasn't getting much out of it and Polly felt like an intruder on the workings of death, which was probably at least a little detrimental to her own mental well-being. She'd leave right now and go on her shift early and promote Acting Corporal Wenzel to Actual Corporal Wenzel, and then maybe call in after dinner to inquire about any progress in vampire health. That was what she was going to do.

She got up and was half way to the door when she noticed something held her in the room, and she reacted to it by turning around. Something was very definitely different about Mal, and while she couldn't put it into words or even into a sense of vagueness, she felt she had to approach her and do something completely innocent. Like, check her wrist for a pulse! Yes, she would do that.

Rational parts of Polly's brain noticed they weren't in charge anymore and went on to have a screaming fit while their spokeslobe tried to assess the situation more diplomatically and pointed out that checking for a pulse was comparably reasonable and shouldn't really be vetoed. So Polly took Mal's left hand, found it warmer than expected, and then, to the purpose of a more thorough investigation, decided to undo the thick leather strap with which Mal's arm was fixed to the table by the wrist, in order to find a pulse.

For a long, breathless moment there was nothing. Then, to her surprise and abject horror, there was one carefully timed, solitary _thump_.

She barely had time to cry out when Mal's hand grabbed hers, her fingers forcefully digging into her skin, her sharp nails - claws - drawing blood immediately. Polly managed to jerk her arm back, and watched in slow motion as Mal moved her hand, red-streaked, towards her suddenly smiling mouth -

"Oh no, you don't," she shouted, when her reflexes were finally up and running. Mal was usually both stronger and faster than she was and every mock-battle of theirs had been a lost cause from the start, but apparently death did slow her down a little. Thus Polly managed to wrestle Mal's arm back down and secure it once more with the strap in the split second before Private Igor arrived in the room, carrying a drawn-up syringe.

Mal lay as still as before, and Polly was almost ready to believe she'd imagined the whole thing, including and especially the smile, but now her hand started stinging. Absent-mindedly, she wiped it on her trousers.

"He's -" she began, as her good hand was still reaching behind her to where she knew the emergency stake was lying on the window sill. _He's awake? Reverted? He managed to lure me into untying him while appearing even less than unconscious?_

Igor at least seemed to respect her confusion as she told him shortly of what she thought had happened. Although now she wasn't so sure anymore. It seemed like such a daft idea to free Mal's hand, but did that really mean she hadn't acted on her own free will? Nuggan knew she had acted on enough daft ideas in her lifetime without a dead vampire making her do it, up to and including signing up for twelve years and not stomping her foot harder upon hearing of Clogston's reckless spy program.

She watched dejectedly as Igor swiftly examined Mal's vital functions, found at least a few of them present, if not up to normal levels, pulled back her sleeve and proceeded to inject a clear fluid into the vein of her arm. It was then that Polly consciously noticed how malnourished the vampire was, even compared to what counted as normal in the Borogravian army. She thought she must have developed some serious tunnel vision the night before, not noticing how the bones of Mal's wrist and elbow stood out sharply and how the veins were clearly visible and stringing along her forearm even in its relaxed state.

"It doethn't have to mean anything," said Igor, and Polly, eager to believe, let her fingers holding the stake relax a little. "Thith ith reflecthive behaviour, while reform... ithn't. Hith thythtem has been through a lot of thtrethth, we'll have to thee what he'th like fully consciouth."

It'll be harder to kill Mal, then, thought Polly, and it occured to her that the private did like Mal a great deal. Well, the relationship between any Igor and any vampire had always been a special one.

"Was that the coffee injection?" she asked, perceiving the beginnings of a faint tremor in Mal's body.

"I hope I've managed to ecthtract the relevant thubthtantheth," said Igor, "I've altho ecthperimented with pain medication, but thethe thingth theldomly work with vampireth; thought I'd give it a shot. Look, he'th reacting!" he added, pointing out the trembling with the glee of a scientist.

It _was_ the nicest thing Polly had laid eyes on in five weeks, she thought, still holding the stake.

"We'll probably be stuck in this hole for a while, private," she said. "Any idea how long it will take until he's able to, you know, communicate?"

Igor shrugged. "A few dayth, at the motht," he said. "Vampireth are pretty thturdy. But I can't leave him here."

"Why not?" asked Polly. "What's the matter?" She felt that her tentative optimism was already dying a whimpering death.

"Thith ith the infirmary," said Igor patiently. "It ith the nature of the thing that people will be generally helplethth. Altho, they tend to bleed, and he _will_ be thenthitive to the smell. We need to put him up in a more itholated area."

For a moment, Polly was about to suggest one of the cells in the south wing, and maybe it was because she felt so ashamed at this being her first thought, she said, "My office has a side room. There's no-one in that corridor but me."

She didn't really want to. Polly took pride in her ability of being honest with herself, but of this truth, she wasn't very proud: she wanted to hand Mal over to someone who'd fix her and then give her back, new and improved. She'd thought Igor would be able to do it.

"Do you think thith ith a good idea?" said Igor.

Polly felt her eyes narrow. "What do you mean?" Igors tended to be distressingly good at analysing the people they worked under. Maybe he'd seen right through her.

"You _are_ hith friend," said Igor. "The recovery will be difficult enough already; your involvement will put conthiderable thtrain on you both. Thergeant"

Polly wanted to sternly tell him she could handle this all right _and so could Mal_, but could their friendship? Well, could it?

"I find the idea lacking, myself," Polly admitted, "but you can't be in two places at once to keep an eye on him, and I already know a handful of details that I _know_ Mal wouldn't want anyone else to know. And I promised him that I'd see to it that his wishes were met if it came to this. Besides," - she sighed; this was truly the bones of the matter - "this is the kind of responsibility that would be inappropriate to delegate. I can't order anyone to look over Mal."

Well, she _could_ probably bundle her up and leave her in front of Clogston's office, Polly thought bitterly, that'd be at least approaching justice (possibly from the other end, though). She didn't want to be the one who had to carry a stake at all times. She'd never asked for this. Polly'd wanted a sarcastic little vampire back after five days, not a dead and potentially dangerous one after thirty-eight. This wasn't fair for anyone.

She swallowed. "There's also the cells," she suggested, quietly. She wasn't sure if Mal had the capacity for listening, but of all things she didn't want her to overhear that one ranked somewhere near the top position.

"Abtholutely not," said Igor. They were both a little embarrassed when, after a moment, they realised he'd almost shouted. "No," he added. "He'll have more to recover from than just coffee deprivation."

"I know that," said Polly, feeling defensive.

"The restraints are bad enough in that regard," said Igor.

"I _know_ that, private," said Polly.

"I hope you do," said Igor. "Becauthe the minute you put any of my patientth in a cell without a really good reathon, I'll rethign." There was a pause, and then a a little more embarrassment. "Thergeant," he added.

Polly was tempted to reply with a very accurate statement regarding the relative difficulty of just resigning from the army at whim, but she declined. Igors always had their way, and besides, he was sort of maybe a bit right. "Okay," she said. "You do that. I think my shift just started," and she fled, her right hand still stinging.

* * *

Of course Mal wasn't going to reclaim her access to this reality with a wondering, "Where am I?", but instead confused Polly with a string of gibberish lacking in vowel diversity but making up for it in consonants. A mere ten minutes ago, Polly had brewed up a stiff espresso, thinking that maybe the coffee scent may be helpful in waking Mal. She hadn't expected it to work that fast, though. It had only been a day since Igor had pulled the stitches in Mal's throat and declared it mostly healed.

Sweet, Polly thought absent-mindedly, larynx mended, vocal chords working -

"Huh?" she said, pouring a small quantity of the now merely luke-warm espresso onto a tablespoon. Consciousness may mean presence of an actual swallowing reflex, after all. Then the epiphany hit her that _Mal had spoken_ and _she was going to be fine_. It just had to be cryptic. Why Polly'd expected something meaningful or profound, she couldn't recall.

The application of coffee onto vampire commenced. It wasn't a particularly successful attempt, but Polly was determined not to give Mal a chance to remember that in all probability she was supposed to have been reverted for weeks.

"Was ist dein verdammtes Problem, _przychsnyaliydrzik_?" That last bit was a well-loved Borogravian insult of complicated etymology. Thus, Polly concluded that the rest was probably Uberwaldean, that Mal wasn't going to ask where she was because she was convinced she already knew where she was, and that Mal had just insulted Polly's heritage and her taste in both wallpaper and sexual fetishes. Borogravian swearwords usually covered a broad range of topics, just in case.

"Mal," she said, "it's me, Polly. You're safe now." She'd looked forward to saying these exact words so much, but now they felt strange. Still, she felt her face erupting in a smile that Mal couldn't see.

Mal seemed to be considering this. Then, she experimentally strained her arms against the leather straps that were keeping her down, the material giving a little, but it didn't tear. Maybe she could do it at full capacity. Maybe not. Then she relaxed just as suddenly, defeated. "_Sicher_," she said, and she refused any more coffee. It was a bit of a struggle.

Polly's smile froze where it was. She supposed she should be glad Mal hadn't come back as a ravening monster, but maybe she was merely too weak. It was too soon to know, and what with her refusing coffee -

"Look," she said, "I'll be happy to explain all this later, Mal. But right now it is imperative that you drink your coffee regularly so we can eventually release you. Now open your mouth for Auntie Polly, _please_."

There was a long pause until Mal's lips moved again. "Keinen Kaffee mehr," she said, nearly tonelessly, and since she had to open her mouth a little, Polly took her chances with the spoon again. She was becoming increasingly frustrated with this endeavour.

"Hell, Mal!" she said. "Just swallow, it's not poison!"

She won that bit, as Mal resigned to take a tiny sip. Polly was so glad she had started with an espresso instead of a latte. Igor had prescribed one unit of coffee every two hours; how the hell she was going to get any reports done if things continued like this, she didn't know.

"Okay now, that wasn't so bad," she said. "Now listen. This is Borogravia. Well, at least I think it's Borogravia now, but the ruperts are still working that bit out with Ankh-Morpork. The point of it all is - say 'aah', there's a good vampire - that we speak Borogravian here. At least, your monolingual sergeant does."

"Apparently, but does she listen?" said Mal. "No more coffee, monolingual sergeant."

Polly's heart broke. Could it really be that she'd get her favourite vampire back so soon? Better not act rashly, she thought, she'd been picking the scabs off her right hand for two days now.

"Did you hear a word I said, corporal?" she said, her heart singing. "You are getting over severe deprivation. The deal is, you act like Mr. Nice Coffee Drinker Guy and drink a lot of coffee, and we in turn do not treat you as a dangerous bloodsucker."

Mal winced visibly at the word, Polly noticed.

"Sorry about that," she said, mentally slapping herself. "The bottom line is, please just have some coffee. Please." Sheer idiocy let her add, "you know, I was pretty afraid for you this time."

Mal's face didn't show a single trace of emotion. After a lengthy pause of not giving in to Polly's begging, she said, "You know, I can smell the wood on you. Impostor."


	4. Chapter 4

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 4**

* * *

After two more days of this, Polly suspected Mal was slowly letting go of her impostor theory, but it worried her that Mal didn't seem the slightest bit relieved about this. And she had found a new angle at which she could be insufferable.

"I _won't_ drink this coffee, and you _will_ untie me now. This isn't _funny_, Pol. I'm fine."

"That from someone who sleeps eighteen hours a day," said Polly. "Look, if it was just you and me on an island somewhere -"

"You and me and a pair of chains?" said Mal. "Kinky."

Polly rolled her eyes, which coincided with a sigh of long suffering from Mal. "All right," said Mal. "I will drink this coffee but you will untie me first."

Igor had told Polly to look out for manipulative behaviour. But Polly had found she honestly couldn't tell, since she figured everyone would get a little manipulative if they were denied such an ordinary thing. The question had hung around during the last few days: give in or not, take her chances with a potentially unhinged vampire or play it safe - and quite suddenly, she decided there was probably a finite amount of perceived safety in this world, and she didn't need to keep the vampire dependent on her care by continuously raising the bar until a saint couldn't prove they were fit for human company.

"Half now, half later," she said. At least, she thought, she was being pragmatic about it. It wasn't about winning this stupid little game at all.

Mal's tense shoulders fell a little. "I _guess_," she said.

There was a second in which Polly seriously debated whether she could keep her promise. Well. Better try now when she could still overpower the exhausted vampire, than later, when she'd gained strength. And after Mal had obediently drunk one half of the offered coffee, she leant over her to open the straps that kept her arms down, convinced that Mal, in her state of heightened awareness, could feel every inch of the distrust directed at her.

Mal sat up, carefully, for the first time after she'd been rescued. The first thing she did was bringing up her hands to her face, feeling gingerly for the bandage that was still firmly placed over her eyes. It didn't give.

"Don't ever play that shit on me again, Pol," she said.

"Well excuse me, I just -"

"I won't _discuss_ this. Hell." With that, she reached over and took the coffee cup out of Polly's hands. Her aim was curiously impeccable, but her grip was unsteady since her hands were clearly shaking under the weight. Polly thought to offer her help, but felt too offended to actually do so. Besides, Mal might have tried to rip her head off. So far, she had failed to do so despite her hands being freed, though, so that was one good thing.

Mal drained the cup down to the last drop of coffee with no sign of enjoyment, then gave it back to Polly. Maybe she was sensing a question that Polly had wanted to ask ever since - well, all the time, really, because she answered it.

"They gave me coffee," she said. This was good, Polly thought, but the way she said it -

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

Mal hesitated on an answer, apparently weighing different ways of phrasing something. "You never asked," she said, eventually. "I - never thought it was possible that there could ever be too much. ... the fuck am I telling you this?"

"But you are - you _were_ deprived," said Polly, not really knowing why she was trying to drive this point home. "I'm not blind, Mal. You bit yourself. You didn't even do that back in Nedevya."

Tentatively, Mal felt for the skin on her arms and hands, clearly a little surprised when her fingers found neat bandages instead of raw skin. "Yeah, well," she said, "things changed, towards the end, and - in Nedevya, we had smokes," she changed the topic, brightly.

"Yeah," said Polly, definitely not reminiscing. "The moths had eaten everything else," _and we ate the moths_. "That reminds me, you want one?"

"A moth? No."

"A cigarette," said Polly.

"Yes, please." It sounded almost joyful. Polly was glad to hear some things had remained the same, even though she expected Igor was going to kill her for this.

She dug a mostly empty pack of cigarettes out of her coat pocket, lit up one cigarette for Mal, another for herself. She was halfway through the first rush of lightheadedness and nausea when Mal asked, between two rounds of inhaling deeper than one should be able to when one was an inch away from being clinically dead, "Since when do _you_ smoke, sarge?"

Since day six, she thought. "I've picked it up a couple of weeks ago," she said. "Bad habit."

"I know," said Mal. "I guess I just blew my chance at quitting."

Polly couldn't help herself. She laughed. Only a little, though, and then she bit her lip and tried to be a little more solemn - the more she thought about it, she found that it hadn't even been that funny, but a glance over at Mal told her that the vampire's lips curled upwards at the edges. It looked appropriately smile-like. She was, at that moment, so happy to see it, she thought she wouldn't ever be able to express it in words.

Mal turned the cigarette in her fingers. "Are these mine?" she asked.

"No," said Polly. She hadn't been able to touch the pack of cigarettes that Mal had left behind. "I won them off Smith fair and square. I did haul your stuff across half of Uberwald, though; you can have yours back if you want."

"That's - sweet of you," said Mal. "Thanks."

Uncommented for now by them both, Mal's hand crept over, her fingers bumped against Polly's forearm and slid down to take her right hand. When Mal's fingers found and felt over the very noticeable scabs, remains from when she had dug her nails into Polly's hand to draw blood, Polly froze.

_No,_ she thought. _Not now, please_ -

"Was that me?" Mal asked, who apparently - hopefully - hadn't noticed how Polly's other hand had silently closed around the stake she was carrying, the cigarette uncomfortably clenched between two fingers. She nodded, and then, recalling her companion's current eyesight situation, said "yes," in a very small voice.

"I'm sorry I did that," said Mal. "I thought you were -"

Polly exhaled slowly, a little relieved that Mal had let go of her hand immediately upon noticing her discomfort, but also surprised to learn that Mal had actually been conscious during that little moment. "Don't worry," she said, to herself as much as to Mal.

_I missed you terribly and I'm happy to have you back_, was what Polly wanted to express, but didn't know if it would be at all appreciated. Mal was retreating already, and Polly wondered if she was, in the face of this distrust, she was reconsidering everything she had said in this short exchange. Mal smoked the cigarette down to its end. There must be something Polly could do, not to make the things that had happened better, but maybe to not make them stand out so much.

Maybe some classical approach. "You know, you can talk to me, if you want," she said gingerly.

Before Mal got a chance to answer in the negative, they were both saved by a knock on the door over in Polly's office. She figured it would be either Clogston or Igor, and in either case she dedicated a moment to feeling slightly guilty about the cigarette smoke in the tiny room - but she could conceivably blame it on Mal! - then she went over to the other room to open the door to the corridor.

"Long meeting tonight, eh?" she said to the ledger and the Major attached to it.

"New personal record," said Clogston. "Fourteen hours, not counting the tea break. Vimes really _means_ it; he won't leave without setting up a document for war conduct, and the Uberwaldeans aren't having with it."

"Really," said Polly. She thought it was high time to somewhat ratify the unwritten rules of not kicking prisoners in the head. The Uberwaldeans, apparently, didn't.

Which reminded her that she should probably have told Mal there were Uberwaldeans in the castle.

"Oh, and we're not at war with Uberwald," said Clogston. "Remember that when talking to them. There's a lady down there who's quite adamant of the fact that Borogravia is at war with an extremist Uberwaldean splinter group that doesn't represent Uberwald as a whole."

"The whole of Uberwald consists of extremist Uberwaldean splinter groups," said Polly, "that don't represent Uberwald as a whole. That's what Uberwald _is_. What's her point?"

"She's mostly on our side, so I wasn't going to argue," said Clogston. "Now, where's your vampire? I need to see him."

From Clogston's mouth, Polly thought bitterly, this could only mean more bureaucracy or more mortal danger. Or both! Still, she knocked on the door to the side room and called, softly - the vampire's ears would pick it up -, "Oy, Mal! Contact with the outside world!"

There was a noncommittal sound from the inside, and when they entered the room, it was to the sight of Mal who had just lit a second cigarette, and was blowing grey smoke in the general direction of her visitors.

Polly couldn't really say what she had expected from this encounter. What she hadn't expected was this cold, dark _thing_ that passed for conversation among these two.

[Reasons that a certain overly adventurous corporal should really learn how to pick people with whom to get overly adventurous. Exhibit A:]

Mal: Chris_tine_. (A lazy, cigarette-holding salute is produced.)

Clogston: (Pause) I am glad to see you are recovering, corporal.

Mal: Meetings going successfully?

Clogston: I find them rather dragging.

Mal: That is terrible. Wish there was anything I could do.

Clogston: I need a report from you. (A sergeant considers banging her head against the doorframe, but decides to watch on in fascination as the communication train wreck continues.)

Mal: (says nothing at first, takes a deep drag and attempts to fix Clogston in a glare which fails due to - or is emphasized by - the opaque nature of bandages.)

Clogston: Ankh-Morpork is investigating possible counts of war crimes.

Mal (patiently): I can't write a report, Christine. I'm blind.

Clogston: Eyes growing back okay?

Mal: Something is growing. I dearly hope it's eyes. Could be tentacles! Or teeth. (For inexplicable reasons, the vampire seems cheered up by this tangent in the conversation.)

Clogston: We'll need the circumstances of capture, account of living conditions while in capture, that sort of thing. I can send up my adjutant if you need any help.

(A sergeant is noticing the subtle signs of a vampire being dissatisfied with that suggestion, namely, the attempt to crush the cigarette between her shaking fingers while pointedly saying nothing for a moment.)

Mal: Or _hair_.

Polly: I can do it. Really. No problem.

Mal: I have lost all recollection. Too bad.

Clogston: I'm sure you two will figure something out. If in doubt, confabulate. I need that report by Friday, if at all possible. And Polly, I may drop in tomorrow after the meeting.

Mal: A good day to you, too, Christine.

[Exit of Major Clogston, and end of exhibit A]

There was a lengthy pause. That second cigarette met the end of its crumbly life. Then Polly said, "... Confabulate?"

"Fill in the gaps," said Mal.

"Sounds dirty," said Polly.

Mal snorted. "And thanks for your offer, but I don't exactly want to tell you, either."

"About what?" said Polly. "This recollection you're lacking? Gotcha."

"I find your use of facts against me offensive," said Mal. "Also, this recollection that I'm lacking is not up to army report standards, sarge. Especially not your reports; as I recall they're always very consistent - "

"I don't really think you _have to_", said Polly, "if you really don't want to."

"This _is_ the army, though," said Mal. "I know it's hard for us free spirits to adjust. I myself have an allergy to orders, but sometimes you find they're just there." It sounded miserable.

"I meant, in a moral sense, like," said Polly.

Mal evidently decided not to further expand on the subject of insubordination and said, instead, "she really is assertive. Huh."

Polly checked her pocket watch whether it was time for coffee again, hoping Mal wouldn't follow up on that specific route to madness.

"I mean," said Mal, "I will obviously never try to... canoodle... with ruperts again, they're much too -"

Polly, who may possibly have been thinking about her possibly impending rupertification, said, "she isn't bad for a rupert."

"How do _you_ know?" There was that sauciest of grins. Polly had almost forgotten it even existed. But it did, and it still made her blush. Since Polly had long ago learned that the best way to avoid constant blushing with a vampire was to hurtle forward until everyone couldn't look anyone in the eye anymore, she said, "so, was there ever any canoodling?"

"Nah," said Mal, as she felt for the ashtray and, having found it, stumped out the cigarette end in it. "The whole thing wasn't one of my finest hours. Days. Weeks. Help." She lay back and pulled up her blanket, and only the cautiousness of her movements told Polly that she may still be in a lot of pain that she wasn't admitting to.

"You need anything else?" said Polly.

Mal's voice was already rather slurred. "If you are implying coffee," she said, "no. I want to sleep."

_Well, that never kept you_, thought Polly and then she ruminated over the question of what quantities of coffee could possibly be perceived as "too much" by her corporal, and decided not to press the point.

"Don't you have a report or five to write?" asked Mal, clearly drifting off.

"Admittedly, but I think I'll take the privates out for a bit," said Polly, "before they forget which end of a sword is the business end."

There was an uncomfortable pause. "How much do they know of this?" asked Mal. For some reason, this seemed to be important to her.

"Only the wounded hero bit," said Polly, "no details. Wait, that's probably 'cause you haven't actually shared any."

"Good," said Mal, in the general direction of the wall.

Polly, who did know some of the details already, or had deduced them, at least, had to admit Mal probably had a point there. "Some of them saw you in the cellar," she said, but there turned out to be no answer. Quietly, she left the room.

* * *

The next afternoon (sergeants procrastinated with the best of them) Polly refilled her inkwell at the supply office, brewed a cup of tea because she feared she may need it, and sat down on the floor with a ledger on her knees. As usual, a certain vampire wasn't cooperating.

"C'mon, Mal," she said. "We'll start at the beginning, eh? You wandered off into the night. What happened then?"

"Do you know the feeling," said Mal, slowly, "when your memory has grown holes, and they keep getting bigger?"

"It's been a long time since I was that drunk," said Polly. "I'll just write down whatever you tell me. Chronologically. C'mon, you can do this."

The vampire seemed to consider this for a moment, then apparently decided to give it a shot. "I wandered off into the night, right," she said. "Think I wandered for a while. Don't recall finding any headquarters or somesuch. They got me two days later, in a deserted Borogravian village about thirty miles into Uberwald, north-north-west of our camp then."

"Er," said Polly. "How?" It seemed inconceivable to her that her sneaky vampire had simply got herself caught like that when she could sense other people from miles away. Also, she thought, the account so far was rather detailed for someone who claimed systemic memory loss.

"'Cos I was trying to be a hero," said Mal. "Very brave, very gullible, didn't know what I was thinking; don't recommend."

Polly listened to the story, which was unexpectedly complete. There had been a young boy of about eight, lost in the woods, who said he'd been left behind in the chaos when the villagers had been driven away, and now he couldn't find their trail.

"Must have been there for weeks," said Polly, not quite believing it. After all, there were said to be vampires - the unreformed kind - in the woods.

"Yes," said Mal. "Astonishing feat for a human child, huh? Should have given that some thought."

After a short introduction to the concept of reform, Mal had promised to accompany him as long as it was still dark, to the next village which was sort of on her way and where the child said he had relatives he could stay with. Mal had thought maybe the relatives, Borogravian by heritage if not by passport, were knowledgable regarding the location of the Uberwaldean army.

The village, though, had turned out to be abandoned as well; merely a broken water mill at the river was making a constant, low-level noise, masking lesser sounds like footsteps or heartbeats to any awesome ninja vampire who hadn't slept for two and a half days.

"I stayed there until dawn," said Mal, "which would be when I noticed the sentries. There were a tad more than I could handle on my own. Twelve! No, make that fifteen."

"A trap," said Polly.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," said Mal. "After that, I did find their headquarters. And a most glorious victory it was."

Polly paused. Maybe some reassurement was needed. "I wouldn't have left the child there either," she said.

"I wish I had," said Mal coolly. "I could handle myself outside at night when I was that age."

"You," said Polly, "were under the protection of the meanest vampire around, if I recall correctly?"

"Builds character, is all I'm saying," said Mal, who was probably being sarcastic.

"Reminds me," said Polly, who'd been harbouring the thought for a few minutes now and thought it was time to present it. "I thought it was vampires who used children as bait."

Mal shrugged. "Don't recall any vampires. And it really isn't terribly innovative a concept; let's not ask why I fell for it." She listened to Polly scribbling down a few notes. "Do you mind confabulating a little?" she added. "Make me look less stupid?"

"The Uberwaldeans will be in the room and argue about it," Polly reminded her. "Best stick to the truth."

"Yeah," said Mal. "They're not going to argue the truth at all. Whatever it may be."

"Huh?" said Polly, finishing a sentence fragment. "I think we made a remarkably coherent start, didn't we?" Mal didn't reply to that. Polly looked over her notes and thought they were worth about three lines of report. She supposed they could be glad ruperts were suckers for heroism.

"You were captured," she said. "What happened after that?"

Mal's face remained perfectly blank. "It is a bit of a blur," she said.

"_Do_ try," said Polly. "Else I'll just put down 'interrogations' and leave it to the ruperts to figure it out."

"Chris did want war crimes," said Mal. "So I guess you can write down I was smacked around a bit at first, seems plausible enough, doesn't it. Wait, that was after I - again heroically - resisted a pretty insulting attempt at bribery. I think that bit came first."

"Oh dear," said Polly. "How unexpectedly - "

"- Kind?" suggested Mal. "They tried to offer me the money they took from me in the first place," she said. "There are limits."

"Well-done," said Polly absent-mindedly. She scanned the list Clogston had provided for prompts. "General circumstances of captivity, it says here on the form," she said. "Quality of food, drink, medical care, special requests met? This is dumb."

Looking at her corporal, Polly thought she could probably cross out the issue of food altogether. And it seemed the only bit of medical care that had taken place in that cell had been a by then nearly unidentifiable length of semi-elastic cloth wrapped tightly around Mal's knee, probably by herself. Polly thought she'd recognised it by way of tiny metal hooks as a pretty unique piece of underwear. Mal was the only soldier she knew who'd had it custom-made.

"There was a cat in the cellar," said Mal, who apparently agreed that Clogston's list was overly optimistic. "It liked me a lot."

"All cats love you, Mal," said Polly, "but that's not really the -"

"It was the only being in the universe that ever truly loved me," said Mal. "It came over for a few nights and tried to sit on my face when I was sleeping. I think it had fleas. Suckers agree cats are awesome."

"Mal," said Polly, "are you sure you're all there? Do you need another coffee?"

"Polly," said Mal, quite suddenly changing from almost playful to intense. "Did you ever vomit from too much to drink?"

"Yeah, well," said Polly. "I suppose. But it may have been a stomach bug." She thought she knew where this was heading.

"Try it with coffee sometimes," said Mal. "Oh, and vowing not to drink ever again wasn't an option. I was awake for five days. Will you please get it into your head that I do not want any more coffee than absolutely necessary?"

Polly didn't quite know how to respond, so she busied herself writing that bit down. All the while, Mal lit up a cigarette. "About the cat -" she said.

"What _about_ the cat?" said Polly.

"Leave the coffee bit out," said Mal, "the ruperts will think I'm not properly stabilised." Polly obediently struck that bit out; she thought Mal had a point there.

"I think you should know that the cat -," Mal began. "Oh, never mind. Can we be done for today?"

"So far I've got the capture on account of being a hero, a bit of interrogation with some light smacking around, and an invasive yet oddly charming cat," said Polly.

"Yeah," said Mal, "sounds about right."

"Corporal," said Polly, "I do not actually believe you when you say you can't remember anything." On the contrary, she thought Mal was being quite clear about the things she chose to tell her.

Mal evidently decided to avoid the issue by a wide detour. "What happened on your side?" she said.

"I can fill you in later," said Polly. "But right now, we've got to concentrate on -"

"It's just that you may help me contextualise a few bits and pieces that have been floating around," said Mal. "For clarity's sake."

Polly got out her notebook, in order to appear busy. "March on the Koebe Plains, settled there for a few weeks," she said, "captured an Uberwaldean spy after three days, captured an Uberwaldean spy after five days, no more spies after that. Whole lot of nothing, surprise attack of the Uberwaldean army after three weeks."

"Three weeks, eh? Tell me more," said Mal, apparently counting something on her fingers. Probably not days; Polly remembered that the cell didn't even have a window.

"We won."

"Thank you, I deduced that much. How?"

"It was - ," Polly thought for a moment, " - strange," she concluded. "They seemed to expect a completely different army, in terms of size and armour and strategy and reinforcements. It gave us enough of a surprise element to win, even though they were the surprise attackers. But I'm not sure if the ruperts bought my clever interpretation."

"And now I think I'm getting at something," said Mal. "How very strange indeed. The nerve!" She sounded like someone who had just now discovered a new and very rich source of anger.

"You gave them false information, didn't you?" said Polly. "You may have saved us all, you complete idiot."

Mal gave a nonchalant shrug. "I may have fibbed around a little at first, but I don't remember outright lying in the end, which if you think about it sure makes me the idiot here," she said. "Funny, I thought I gave them information that I believed to be perfectly correct." She sensed Polly's surprise, and added, "yeah, well, I'm not a hero all of the time. I trusted in you to be able to save your own collective arse while I did my own individual one."

There was a knock on the door, the sound of someone stepping into Polly's office after a polite pause of about five seconds in which none of them said anything.

"I," said Polly. "How? I know I never shared the plans with you, for the exact purpose of avoiding needless heroism. How did that happen?" A dark idea formed in her mind. Oh _no_, she thought.

"I don't know," said Mal, "but _why don't you ask Christine_."

Mal had apparently recognised the Major by the sound she mostly wasn't making. Else it was a lucky guess. Polly cursed herself for leaving the door slightly ajar, but then, with all the cigarette smoke, they'd needed the fresh air.

Still. What was this, a conference room?

"At ease," said Clogston, coming in after a cursory knock. "I believe that an explanation is in order. Sergeant, can you leave us alone for a while?"

"Why?" asked Mal. "You ashamed of something?"

"Corporal," said Clogston, "I understand that you have been through a bit of an ordeal, but lashing out against a superior officer will not go unnoticed."

_Whoa_, thought Polly. _Clogston, you utter lightweight. Mal has disrespected my authority for over three years!_

"You can stay then, Perks, since it seems to be all right with the corporal" said Clogston. "Maladict, I didn't _plan_ on your getting caught. You must believe me."

"But it worked out so beautifully for you, didn't it?" said Mal.

"I must admit that it did," Clogston conceded after a moment. "But that is beside the point."

"You did give me wrong information on purpose," said Mal. "It worked. What is this, if not the point?"

"The purpose of spying," said Clogston, "and I can't believe I'm telling you this, is to create an imbalance of information. Tipped in our favour." These words were straight from Egglayer's _Conventions for the unconventional: tactics against static warfare_, Polly knew.

"It was a backup plan," Clogston continued. "Nothing more."

Mal commenced smoking as offensively as possible. "You could have trusted me with this," she said, finally. "You could have just told me. I spent weeks trying to lie to them and it never worked in the end, and to think it could have gone so much more efficiently than -" Mid-sentence she opted for a more light-hearted approach. "I mean, we could have wrapped it all up before Hogswatch!"

"Maladict," said Clogston, almost gently, at least by her standards, "that wouldn't have worked. You needed to be convinced it was the truth."

"Who was in on the plan?" said Mal. Polly had been dreading that bit, even though she felt she was almost completely innocent.

"On the final version? The entire high command," said Clogston. "I did talk it through on general terms with a few hopefuls, and even your sergeant here agreed that a decoy may be our best bet."

Clogston, apparently, was a bit of an arsehole, Polly thought.

"I don't believe it, Polly," said Mal, and another cigarette found a high-pressure end between her fingers. "You were in on this fuckery?"

"I said," said Polly, "that I agreed, in general, that a plan like this _may_ work." Forget the hopeful, she thought, it was really time to desert the army and go raise some goats somewhere.

Mal shook her head. "I can't be the only one here who's ever heard of common bloody decency. And look where that gets you."

"I also said," said Polly, who felt she was getting defensive even though Mal's anger sounded pretty reasonable to her, "I also said, specifically, that I wouldn't feel comfortable sending anyone in there with false information, because one, there wasn't a guarantee it'd even work, and two, responsibility for the lads and all that." She thought it was a bit of a necessity that no-one got the impression their superiors may betray them to the enemy, not even for the greater good.

"And that is, ultimately," said Clogston, "why I gave that order and took the responsibility. We are in a war."

"Ah, so that's the big picture stuff that Blouse mentioned all the time. And did you ever consider," said Mal, "what may happen to the pawns in your big picture when the enemy found out they lost thousands of men due to being led on? Do you think I lost my eyes in a hilarious cutlery accident?" Polly supposed she should be glad that Mal's righteous anger wasn't directed at her anymore.

"The plan managed to save thousands of our own soldiers," said Clogston. Her voice was hard. "While the outcome is regrettable, yes, I do consider this a trade-off. How is the report coming?"

Mal opened her mouth, and closed it. Polly had never seen her so thoroughly shut up. "Fine," Polly lied for her.

"Good," said Clogston. "You have a little more time; Vimes' war crimes charter has been bumped to the end. It's borders at the moment." She turned to leave.

"Why me?" said Mal. "Not that I'm whining to have been trusted with such an honourable task, but, you know, for the sake of complete transparency. Something personal, perhaps?"

Considering the evidence, Polly probably shouldn't have been as surprised as she was that Mal had indeed gone there.

"Because," said Clogston, "and I told Perks this, you know; you were the only one who had a shot at surviving." With that, she left.

"Yeah," said Mal, to nobody in particular. "I did. Right up until the end."

Polly put away the ledger. She'd added a bit about eyes, but didn't find the rest of the information she'd gained would help their case on war crimes. "Oh, Mal," she said, and paused, and felt helpless, and added, "I swear I didn't know any of this."

There was a lot of uncomfortable silence in the room, not only in length, but in depth, too. "I must have tried to flee at least once," said Mal so suddenly Polly actually winced. "I didn't just sit around pouring my heart out to them. Please believe me."

"Mal," said Polly. "You don't have to tell me any of this." Also, she was puzzled. "Why so doubtful?"

For a moment, Mal gave off the impression of someone catching mental fish with their bare hands, in an ocean where their feet didn't reach the ground. "These memories turn up and they begin and end perfectly randomly," she said, finally. "I wish they wouldn't turn up at all, but as long as they do I may choose to share them, isn't this what you want? This one starts with me barely out of the main gates and the dogs catching up with me and ends with me explaining to the guards exactly how to work the amazing Borogravian handgun."

Well, thought Polly numbly, that one certainly explained the close-range gunshot wound. Igor had spent ages puzzling together Mal's left kneecap.

She noted that memory down as well. _Isn't this what you want?_ What a strange question, she thought. Her dreams protested that it was clearly not, that all she had ever asked for was her vampire back on day five, gleeful and boasting. Did that mean she was asking for a Mal who'd leave a child helpless in the woods? Polly's dreams, though long-winded, were usually coherent from beginning to end; the dissonance was jarring.

"Mal," she said, "I don't think this report thing is at all a good idea right now. Or ever. Don't worry about this, I'll confabulate something together."

Mal exhaled, apparently somewhat relieved. "Fine by me," she said.

Polly busied herself by tidying away the ledger and pen. It was useless, her desk was a great big mess already, and the motions she went through didn't actually keep her from thinking about that night after they'd found Mal in the cell. She supposed she could only be glad that Mal was apparently as incapable of remembering some of the details as Polly was of forgetting them. At least, she hoped so.

Much too soon, after the two items had been inarguably put away for good, Polly found herself standing in the doorframe to Mal's room. Might as well ask, she thought.

"Anything else you want in the report?" she said.

"Strange," said Mal, "how the cat stands out so much, isn't it? When it, for once, didn't leave any evidence." Polly thought she understood: Mal's bandaged eyes, her disgust at coffee, her knee, they demanded a story be told that fit them. A cat could safely be forgotten.

"It was the most important thing in the world," Mal added. "Well, right after somehow saving myself because no-one else seemed inclined, but that didn't work out so well. Even then I could damn well pet a cat." There was a pause, and then: "It purred."

Maybe she felt she hadn't actually answered Polly's question. "That's pretty much it," she said. "I'm not so sure about the order, or some of the details, or even if it's memories or deduction from obvious evidence, but there you go, typical army report." There was a thin, unhappy smile. "I'd love to watch Chris present it at their damn conference, though."

Maybe it was memory loss, Polly thought wildly, maybe it was an elaborate revenge scheme. "I shall remember to include the cat, then," she said.

There may have been laughter. Maybe it was both.

"Are you going to be okay?" asked Polly.

"Er," said Mal. "What? Now, later, next week, or what? And what do you mean be okay?" The concept clearly took her by surprise. Probably not a good sign.

"Just now for, uh, now," said Polly. "I'll be off to grab dinner before I finish that report. You want some?"

"No," said Mal. "But since you're going anyway, I could do with a drink. Just don't tell Igor."

Polly said something in the affirmative, added something about how she'd bring up a sandwich anyway for certain scrawny vampires in the vicinity, and then was already half out of the door when she heard Mal calling after her.

"What is it?" she called back.

"How did _we_ treat the Uberwaldean spies? By we I mean you, of course, and by you, I mean - who do I mean, anyway?"

"I don't know the answer to any of that," said Polly. "I wasn't involved."

There wasn't a reply to this, and Polly softly closed the door.


	5. Chapter 5

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 5**

**

* * *

**

It had turned out a good report, thought Polly, and like all good reports it contained about an ounce of honest truth while the rest was deduction and editing for continuity, which was important for ruperts. Now she only had to get Mal to memorise this before she had to appear before the conference - a fate that Clogston had only just mentioned when she'd stood behind Polly in the line for tea. For that alone, Polly decided to delay handing in the report for a little while longer.

Right now, however, she was glad they had finished this report business and set for the more productive waste of time that was getting utterly, utterly tipsy. She'd almost forgotten how much fun this was. Comparably, at least.

"And then I said something stupid and that concludes the story of Christine," sad Mal when the evening had progressed a little. She had never been a particularly discreet, but alcohol tended to make her more talkative, if that was at all possible. Still, Polly was a little disappointed.

"What was it you said to her?" Polly asked.

"There's no way I'm telling you this," said Mal. "It's going to be our sweet little secret."

"It was probably boring," said Polly. "Oh Chris, would you like to learn something about the flora and fauna of the Borogravian high moors? One, things that grow in the mud, two, things that eat things that grow in the mud. Innuendo all the time kills the ability to hold an actual conversation, Mal."

"Harsh words, Ms. I know a lot about birds," said Mal. "At least I had actual conversation lessons. The moors are beautiful. The weather, not so much."

"Three, vampires," said Polly. "In any case, it's not much of a story. Boring."

"Okay, let me throw you a bone, insufferable git," said Mal. "I think she thought I was suggesting a threesome." She waited, apparently for Polly to express how scandalised she was. "I wasn't," Mal added. "I wasn't even talking about sex! As such."

"Shocking," said Polly.

"Okay, that was a lie," said Mal. "I don't think she thought that, but it was all a little awkward, anyway. Best move on, can't all be grand successes, I mean who has the time. Spoilt my average for the decade, though."

Polly tipped back another shotglass of clear liquid. "Don't tell me you're counting. Please."

"'m a vampire," said Mal. "I don't merely count. I write lists, calculate, deduce, induce, infer and prrrognossst."

"Uh," said Polly. "What do you do if it's only like, half a success? Like, er -"

"One day I shall introduce you to the joy of decimal fractions," said Mal. "Also, to Genuan kissing, or whatever concept it is you're looking for. No, I'm not counting, it was a joke, dear sergeant. Pass me the bottle?"

Polly resisted the urge to pour the glass for Mal. It was a bit of a mathematical equation, she thought, since that seemed to be the general theme: vampiric absolute certainty of everything +1, lack of eyesight -1, progressing state of inebriation -1...

Somehow most of the vodka landed inside the glass, then all of the vodka in the glass landed inside the vampire. The equation must be flawed. That, or reality.

"I may regret the question," said Polly. "But what exactly makes kissing Genuan?"

Mal actually laughed. "You seemed to have a pretty clear idea of the concept when you were kissing the pretty barman back in the capital."

"Ah," said Polly. "That thing with the tongues. For a moment there I thought you meant _that_ thing with the tongues. And you dragged me away!"

"One, you were very drunk, two, he was very drunk, three, I was going to share a room with you, four, not really a point but I for one am shocked to hear you talking about _that_ thing with the tongues, five, I'm not sure about you but he seemed to prefer gentlemen and was possibly as confuzzled by the redcoat as you were by the long hair." She yawned. "Stereotypes can be _such_ a drag."

"How do you _know_ these things?" asked Polly.

"Vampiric powers of observation," said Mal. "I _ask_ people. While we're at it - yo, Polly, was it the feather boa or the stubble that did it for you?"

"That is... surprisingly hard to answer," said Polly, "but I guess with him it was mostly the alcohol. Oh dear."

There was a pause. "This was what we top nobs call a rhetorical question, but thanks for the heads up anyway, I guess," said Mal, while Polly took another mouthful. She'd built up her preferred level of inebriation, from now on she'd just have to maintain it.

Then Mal very carefully placed her once again empty glass on the table beside her bed, and things changed. The soft clink of the glass hitting wood seemed to make everything colder the room. At first Polly didn't really understand it, and drew her army jacket tighter together. But the chills seemed to be of another sort.

"Stay," said Mal, and suddenly her voice was shaky.

"Mal, what's up?" asked Polly, finally catching up, as the vampire drew the blankets tight around herself. She herself was left sitting on the other end of the bed, leaning against the wall.

"Nothing," said Mal. "Please stay and keep talking to me. My brain just hit a brick wall is all."

"Yeah," said Polly, "it's called acute intoxication."

"I don't know about that but -", said Mal. "Just. Keep. Talking."

At the sight of Mal's shaking hands lighting the umpteenth cigarette today, Polly racked her brain for something to talk about. It seemed there was more than one brick wall in the room. "I guess you already know the bird stories, but -" she said. She felt it was the only topic she could safely elaborate on for hours without hitting something sticky.

Mal hm'd in all the right places, but still, Polly felt she wasn't listening. "You're not listening," she said thusly.

"Yellow-winged running sparrow," mumbled Mal, who was now lying on her stomach and was lighting new cigarettes with the glowing remains of their predecessors. "Fascinating. Eggs. Goes to Lancre in the summer because it likes fish." The pack was soon going to be empty.

"That was three species ago!" said Polly.

Of course she was correct, but there was no victory to be had. For a moment, the only sound was that of air being sucked through glimmering tobacco.

"I thought about you," said Mal.

Polly's lips formed a silent _What_.

"In the cell," Mal clarified, and her tone was nothing if not helpful. "I thought about you a lot."

"Mal, not now," said Polly. "You're drunk, I'm drunker, you're going to feel differently about embarrassing honesty tomorrow, stop while you're ahead. _Please._." She wasn't so sure herself why she was trying to cut this particular conversation short, when she'd lain awake in the wee hours in the morning making herself stop thinking up several ways to start it.

Mal wasn't having with her cunning argumentation, though. "I mean, I figured out pretty soon I really got myself into a spot of bother this time," she said. "And I promised myself, if I ever got out, I would talk to you about this. I really elaborated on my glorious return to freedom, too, you know. It was a thing of beauty. It had a marching band and rainbow-coloured balloons and medals for great patience in the face of general fuckwittery and a Polly who maybe cried a little on my strong shoulder upon my heroical return to our drafty tent. Yes, my imagination does indeed drift towards melodrama sometimes."

"And, I presume, it had a vampire who handled the melodrama in a most stylish way," said Polly, slightly sullen. She'd had thoughts among the same lines, with definitely fewer tears on her side, but with all the style on Mal's that she could get.

"Ex_act_ly," said Mal. "And I must admit the thought kept me going for a while. After that, though, I downsized to elaborating on merely returning. Admittedly, it still had a touch of melodrama -"

"Let me guess," said Polly. "Tears? Oh Mal, I'm so glad you're back, don't ever leave me again?"

She'd downsized herself after a few days, not to a less valiant return, but to maybe a postcard from Klatch, greetings from a deserter in the desert, haha, why don't you come along sometime, we've got cookies, coffee, and peace. Sometimes she'd even imagined it all the way to the scrawled smiling face with teeth that took the place of the signature.

"That sort of thing," said Mal. "Also, I was going to take you aside and say, 'see Polly, about that whole pecking me on the cheek all night long thing, wasn't it time we evolved, I know you've been thinking about it', but I may have been a tad nervous about it. In a very stylish and charming way."

There was nothing to say to this revelation, except, "... ah". Not now, she thought. Not here. They'd had such a nice evening so far, the first one in too many that hadn't been nice at all.

"And then I tried to get away," said Mal, "I really thought I was going to make it, too. And when that failed, I concentrated on saving my own skin for a while, only it turns out I saved everyone but me. Huh."

The comfortable buzz Polly had experienced so far had long turned menacing. "Mal," she said, "I don't know where you got this idea that you need to explain yourself, but you don't. Everyone breaks down in Uberwaldean prisons. There's a book chapter about it and everything."

"When their army came back," said Mal, "there ceased to be a return of any kind. No melodrama. No saving myself. I was going to die there, _and I did_."

Apparently, there were ways to reaccess buried memories. Polly wished she hadn't found out that fun-oriented inebriation was one of them.

"You're still here," Polly pointed out.

"Yeah," said Mal. "I've moved seven storeys up."

"And that's all?" said Polly.

"Feels like it," said Mal. "I haven't even followed through on my one promise to myself to, you know, take you aside and say, in a languish tone, hey Polly, what's up, let's do something about that abomination thing; but there's nothing. They left nothing to discuss, except maybe when some memory turns up and I don't want to be alone with it, but that's not even about you."

By now, Polly had decided to let her talk, to try and drown all this out, feeling like a traitor. She had managed all evening to maintain this impression of beginning normalcy, but now she felt like hiding her face in her hands and having a good cry, if only it weren't so damn embarrassing. Her own dreams, alone in that tent, may have been been slightly less melodramatic, but she'd have gone along with Mal's version if necessary. Anything but nothing.

"And I guess my point is," said Mal, "that I really don't want you to feel like I owe you for helping me, or that you owe me because this is all so pitiful, and maybe that's why I might make a somewhat ungrateful impression sometimes. 'Cos I think it's all getting confused and we don't want that."

"I don't feel like you owe me", said Polly, maybe a tad more aggressively than was strictly necessary.

"But you feel like the universe owes you," said Mal, "and I can understand that. I feel like the universe owes me big time, but it doesn't seem to agree. I think I know what you're trying not to think, Pol, and I promise it's okay to think of yourself at least some of the time. I know I do. But it's probably not a good idea to expect these things to change."

_What about me_, thought Polly. "What about me," she whispered. Mal had got it right, why insist on the opposite. So she wasn't a saint, big surprise.

"Unfair, isn't it?" said Mal. "And now that this is out of the way, would you stay here until I fall asleep?"

"Why?" said Polly.

"No more questions," said Mal. "I'm done for tonight. Please stay."


	6. Chapter 6

Warnings apply! And I'm sorry about this.

* * *

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 6**

As she watched the dark blood hitting grey snow underneath her, Polly felt oddly reminded of an old fairytale. Then the impression ended abruptly; the world went a painful and final, blinding white. Now the panic caught up with her; she woke with a start.

Polly felt as if she'd been kicked (she may or may not have hit her head on the table), and as she was still coming to her senses, lying face-down on the mattress in her office, the sensation that snowflakes were settling on the back of her legs persisted for another dragging second, and then the weight that'd been sitting on her ribs faded. Her shoulders grudgingly relaxed.

What.

This sense of malevolent reality felt utterly familiar to her, and when her memory had finally caught up with the rest of her, Polly had to accept that what had happened in their first squad, years ago, was happening again. Flashsides.

There was no going back to sleep with this on her mind, so she peeled herself out of her moderately warm blankets and got up to throw her uniform jacket over her nightshirt.

Mal had always slept like the dead, even after the rescue, but tonight she'd taken an awfully long time to even relax next to Polly, let alone fall asleep. It couldn't have been more than one hour since Polly had left the room as silently as she could in order to maybe catch a few hours of sleep in her own bed before her next shift began. But now the unrest in the other room exerted an almost physical presence.

She made a step towards the door and recoiled as a foul taste hit her, like water from a sewer seeping down into her mouth, and there was no question of spitting it out; she had to swallow. The fumes from it made the receptor cells in her nose flail and then give up in disgust.

Boy, do I ever need a glass of water or what, Polly thought in order to reassure herself. But that wasn't it, and she knew.

At that point she considered going down into the bar where the rest of the lads were still spending all their IOUs, and leave Mal here with her nightmares until they ceased and she wasn't emanating this horror anymore. But a slight twinge of responsibility suggested to Polly that she may have had a hand in opening the door for all these memories, what with all the interviewing the day before, and, she thought guiltily, the alcohol.

When Polly opened the door silently, Mal lay perfectly still, but distorted in her blanket. Her lips were moving; Polly wondered what it was. This may be Nedevya all over again, she thought.

Polly quickly retracted, closed the door behind her to lean against it for a moment, and took a deep breath.

It was the easiest thing in the world, she thought; just go in there, wake Mal, duck; she'd painfully learned in Nedevya that Mal's nightmares tended to spill over in that split second between sleep and wake. But now Polly was prepared, and it was going to be easy. Even a very tipsy sergeant could do it. She'd just have to get her mind right.

"I really hate it when your brain gets contagious," Polly muttered to an unhearing Mal when she opened the door again.

The eerily moonlit room slipped into strictly visual nonexistence. So whatever it was that Mal was dreaming, her current lack of eyesight appeared to have found its way into it. Polly took a step forward, trying hard to visualise the outline of the room as she remembered it from a moment before, in order not to introduce her toes to a heap of old ledgers, and then she heard the voices from afar. Tinny and unintelligible, they were an unmistakable menace.

No, thought Polly. If she was going to be rational about this, and she fully intended to be, then they were a menace to Mal, not to her, and furthermore (her thoughts grew a tad more optimistic), they weren't really a menace to anyone anymore. Nobody was in any kind of danger right now. Polly could do this. She would cross the room.

With the next step came knowledge, she knew exactly where she was as her naked feet walked over damp stone plates and bumped against a mattress on the floor, which she knew to be grey and stained; she not-remembered counting the stains out of habit, and sniffing them out of an irrational need to prepare herself for all eventualities.

It was too much. She probably still had time to flee this room, Polly thought numbly, but then sleeping Mal let out a sound so thoroughly, desperately miserable, Polly found she couldn't even hesitate as she placed a hand on Mal's shoulder and tried to shake her awake. She knew at once she was too slow.

Gravity changed its relative direction as two things hit her almost at once: one, immediately upon contact, was the sudden and nauseating sensory overload of her muscles clenching and stretching to tearing point, weighed down by a terrible pulsing, hissing mass; of her ears humming with rushing air and laughter; of a scream drowned in sewer water seeping everywhere in her constricted throat -

- one, a split second afterwards, was an impressive blow that send her staggering into the wall behind her, and, upon some consideration, folding up on the floor.

"No," she said, stupidly, back in the world that was probably real, while trying to assess the damage. The skin underneath her eye had split open, and some blood seemed to be trickling down her cheek. She remembered something sticky, but it wasn't a memory. _Get up_, she thought, _get away from the vampire, and clean yourself up_. Staying on the floor, however, was infinitely easier. She said it a second time.

Through the ringing of her head, Polly managed to look up to where Mal had sat up, shaking so hard she blurred around the edges. This took a long time to cease, about as long as the stinging of Polly's face took to change into a duller, softer pain.

Polly wasn't sure how long she had been sitting there, motionless and not quite feeling the cold anymore; it felt like a good alternative to getting up and acknowleding the world's existence. She only knew that the next time she noticed the moon's position, it had slipped considerably lower. Maybe Mal had gone back to sleep, she hoped; but, looking over, Polly found Mal was still sitting up in very much the same position. Then, as Polly was still watching, apparently a decision about further proceedings was reached.

"No no no no," said Polly. "Mal, you're just making it worse. Stop this."

"Make me," said Mal. She was tearing at the bandage over her eyes, at last succeeding in getting the patented Igor construction off. Then she let out a breath. "Finally," she said, and turned as if to look at Polly.

Polly hadn't dared to take a look before, but really, what could make this worse. She looked up and saw dark shadows where Mal's eyes should be. Of course. She could hardly remember anything else, now.

"And stop this, too," Polly added for good measure. Mal ignored that, reaching for the crutches leaning against the wall, next to her bed - Igor had brought them up in a fit of optimism - and tried her best not to fall off the bed too obviously in her quest to leave it. Polly thought she must still be at least a little inebriated.

"Yikes," said Mal. "Cold." Her feet were naked on the floor. She must have practised walking when Polly was away at meetings; Mal still couldn't bend her left leg at the knee at all and her movements were slow and clunky, but - eventually - effective. Polly found herself resenting that.

"Go away," Polly said.

"You never went the fuck away, not once," said Mal. "Let me have a look at this."

It must have been almost impossible, but this _was_ Mal, and if she wanted to sit down on the floor without bending her knee, it happened. Gravity helped.

"What the hell, you can't even see anything," Polly protested.

"Let me," said Mal, again. There was the light touch of spidery fingers on her hand, and Polly took it away. Her hair - much of it was escaped from its ribbon, as always - was brushed away, her face assessed for damages, the blood carefully not touched. Polly looked up.

"I'm sorry," said Mal.

"Huh," said Polly. "Next time I'll bring a light." She saw Mal was looking at her, and what she'd thought had been dark holes in her face had really been shadows in this eerie moonlight. Half covered by still bruised lids, there were Mal's dark eyes, red around the edges, but good as new. Well, probably because they _were_ new.

"Nah," said Mal. "I find it awfully bright." She leant back against the wall, and exhaled, while Polly dabbed at the cut with a handkerchief she'd found in her coat pocket. She felt sick, not so much from the pain but from a very recent memory.

"What was that taste," Polly said. She felt defeated.

"Polly," said Mal, "I'm making this short and I don't want to discuss it. If this happens again, you leave me alone."

"When this happens again, you mean," said Polly. "No refusing coffee anymore, Mal, and I can make this an order if needed." In a situation where there's an oversupply of information, hold on to strategies that used to work. _Pour coffee directly into vampire_ had once been both successful and versatile.

"I'd like to see you try," said Mal. "Fuck that noise, you've got to promise to leave me alone first."

"Well excuse me, I just wanted to help!" said Polly.

"I _know_," said Mal. Something in her expression grew softer, or maybe simply more exasperated. "But there are limits, and this is one of them. Promise me."

Polly shrugged, "All right," she said, "I guess."

Mal was peeking at her from the side, and it was most disconcerting. Polly felt that Mal was going to argue the point despite of what she'd said, quite possibly because Polly was being difficult. But then again, that blow had stung, so she didn't say anything.

Mal was the first to break the silence. "Polly," she said after a while. "I've told you a lot already and I'm... I guess I'm thankful you didn't run away 'cos I think I would have, and maybe I don't appear so terribly choosy about what I tell you some of the time, but that's not true, I am and I suppose we have all guessed there's things I chose to not tell you and I don't choose my dreams and maybe I would have told you about this one and the important thing is, the most important thing of it all is that _I get to decide_."

Mal looked up to the small table next to her nightstand, then appeared to remember that the pack of cigarettes on it was empty. "I appreciate the sentiment," she added. "But unfortunately, that's how these dreams work."

Polly wanted to tell her she understood that, and carry on with a "but" and more defensiveness, but something else had been nagging on her conscience ever since Mal had woken up, and while this may not have been the time to own up, she couldn't think of a time when it was. Honesty won out.

"But I knew about this," she said softly into the room. "Mal, I _knew_. I hoped that if I didn't bring it up -" Polly'd hoped that if she didn't bring it up, Mal wouldn't remember, but stopped herself in time before she said it out loud.

"How?" said Mal. The word cut the room in half.

Until she invited it, Polly had feared, but hadn't really anticipated, that this question would come up on its own. So far Mal hadn't asked how it'd come that all her wounds were cleaned and bandaged and all the blood and dirt washed away, how she was wearing clean clothes instead of the grimy grey tunic and skirt they'd found her in. She'd sort of assumed that Mal had guessed, but maybe this was another manifestation on how her memory didn't serve her well these days.

"After we got you out," said Polly, "I - Igor had a lot to do, so I pitched in. I couldn't not notice."

Mal remained silent for so long that Polly felt she had to defend herself further. "Igor had a lot on his hands during those days, and we couldn't just let you -"

"I'm sure it was all perfectly rational," said Mal. "But tell me, Pol, in all honesty, what does a girl have to do to get some fucking privacy around here?"

"I didn't fucking want to do it in the first fucking place!" Polly noticed she was almost shouting. "But you made me promise long before anyone ever cooked up this wretched mission that I'd take care of business like this if it were ever necessary, if you care to remember _that_, and maybe it wouldn't have had to be me if not for your irrational fear of people finding out what you are. Just a suggestion."

Mal looked like she was going to make a suggestion of an entirely different nature, but then her self-control caught up. "_It's got nothing to do with fear_," she said. "And I would say this was somewhat below the belt if that itself weren't in such unbelievably bad taste."

"No-one here would think any less of you, is all I'm saying," said Polly.

"They bloody well will if they find out I was raped," said Mal. The temperature seemed to drop.

There really were no grounds on which to claim the opposite, Polly had to admit. Not when the very word turned up as sporadically as it did because the concept usually went by another name, like the _trouble you got yourself in_ when you _you'd asked for it_. This time, it may be _what business did she have being there in the first place_. If they were lucky.

"And that's not fair!" said Polly. The downside of being honest was that sometimes an assessment of reality may not only be accurate but also completely useless. Mal acknowledged the fact with another long, thoughtful pause.

Beside Polly, she seemed to consider getting up, but gravity didn't agree. She appeared to opt for bitterness instead. "It was a dirty cleaning rag," she said. "Don't ask me what they scrubbed with it, but it was mostly organic."

"What?" said Polly, and nearly smacked herself.

"The taste," said Mal. Apparently, when life handed you torture, you reacted by torturing other people; at least that was the conclusion that Polly's overexcited and technically still inebriated brain arrived at. She knew it was unfair.

"Stop that," said Polly, "I don't want to know."

"Well, excuse me, I just assumed as much since you asked," said Mal. "And you sure know a lot already, for someone who doesn't want to."

"Go on," said Polly. "Blame me for having eyes and ears and a brain, and admit to yourself you're pissed off because you can't rewrite what happened in peace. If you need an ignorant listener, it'll have to be someone else and I'm _sorry_ but that's the way it turned out."

"For fuck's sake," said Mal. "I'm pissed off because you're acting like a jerk." She looked as if she wanted to strangle someone in close vicinity. "And what are you getting at anyway? Not that there appears to be much of a point to it."

"You keep dumping these bits and pieces on me," said Polly, "and you build a world where things make an appropriate amount of sense without being too horrifying all at once, and then you just add bits and shuffle them round and take some away, as much pain as you can stand at a time and I can't even blame you but it's like watching someone picking scabs. And I'm not here to take in every little bit and hope that was the worst bit. This can't be healthy, Mal."

"Oh, will you stop being so concerned," said Mal. "Damn right I'm probably doing this wrong, because there must be a way to tell this without having them say, what the hell this doesn't even make sense, and what does the vampire complain when other people don't come back from the dead, or don't regrow their bloody eyes, or aren't fucking promiscuous anyway; and I don't even know what I can trust _you_ with. I don't trust _myself_ not to participate in this, for fuck's sake."

Polly felt tongue-tied, trying to choose a point to address but feeling it would be entirely unhelpful.

"I know you want a story," added Mal, her voice softer now. "You want a story that adds up all the way into the present and makes sense and is continuous and doesn't have too many inconvenient holes, and that has a functional vampire some way into the future because for some reason you're also still so - so bloody _hopeful_. But I'm afraid this is less than realistic."

Polly opened her mouth in order to make a discussion out of this, but suddenly the task seemed extraordinarily futile. "I can't believe I'm arguing with you about this," she said. "I'm sorry."

"You're not responsible." Mal exhaled again, and automatically Polly began to search her pockets for a cigarette. There was only one left, and she lit it up, gave it to Mal, who took a deep drag and kept it, staring at a point in the dark.

But some people were, and how could any of them be walking free when Mal could hardly leave this room; it wasn't fair. "This fort is full of Uberwaldeans," said Polly, pausing to rethink if she should even be asking this question. "Would you recognise - ?"

She stopped talking mid-sentence as Mal turned towards her. Her eyes met Polly's, just for a moment, and she carried on smoking in carefully sculptured gestures. Polly swore she'd seen a flicker of pain in that dark gaze, and something else, possibly slightly more constructive; a subtle anger that may be the most dangerous thing in the world. But not to Polly.

"I wouldn't recognise them," said Mal softly. "I didn't smell anything beyond - "

This sick fucking smell. "I'm sorry," said Polly. "I let you go and I'm sorry."

"You're not responsible for what they did," said Mal, staring at that point again. "And neither is Christine, but don't tell her that since she did after all create the situation in which the Uberwaldeans could hold me personally accountable for the death of their mates and I want her to feel bad about that. And neither, I guess, am I, though apparently I more or less managed to achieve what I was supposed to do except I somehow still sat in a cell afterwards, and now that I'm thinking it through I feel responsibilities start to get a little fishy, but the only ones I feel I can safely blame are the Uberwaldeans, and I'm not sure what to do with that particular epiphany, what with Christine apparently pursuing a fucking _treaty_."

That may have been the worst bit, thought Polly, or one of the very many worst bits that she'd encountered so far. That justice was not going to be served, that one could order all this and still be served tea and little canapés afterwards in exchange for one's cooperation, and all they could do was try to carry on as usual. If they were lucky.

"I'm making coffee," said Polly, determined to get a start on it. "I'll put some sugar in it or something, and I'll have some, too, if it helps. You don't have to get over everything all at once but you must get over this."

"I know," said Mal. Her hand crept over, and Polly, after a moment's hesitation, took it and squeezed, lightly, noticing that Mal's hand had healed perfectly. And then dread rose up in Polly: the story wasn't told, but the evidence was fading already, and somehow she had the feeling they didn't have much time to get at the truth anymore.

"I'm making coffee," she said, again, but she couldn't get up, couldn't let go of Mal as the muscles in her hand clenched together.

"Polly," said Mal. "Oh no, Polly, don't. I'm not crying, either." She still held Polly's hand. There was a pause, moonlight, they were sitting on the floor and it was all very absurd. "Or," said Mal, after she had apparently put the thought through some intense scrutiny, "I guess there's no actual harm in this, so carry on, sarge, if you must."

Polly considered surrendering to this strange comfort because it was tempting, and she did for a while, fighting the feeling that this was stupid and if someone should be crying, it wasn't her. But Mal flat out refused. Finally, Polly freed her hand in confusion, as gently as possible, and wiped each eye once with her sleeve. "Sorry about this," she said. "I - I'm back in a moment."

The coffee she brought back may have been a bit on the syrupy side, Polly having done her best to eliminate the coffee taste, but Mal said Thank You politely and later there was another attempt at going to bed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 7**

**

* * *

**

A few days passed without further complications by way of new memories surfacing, and Polly attributed that to generous application of coffee onto vampire.

Sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, it still broke her heart; she'd never thought there'd be a time in her life when she'd miss Mal's exaggerated, blissful, stupid enthusiasm for all things caffeinated, how her eyes would light up at the sight of a freshly brewed cup no matter where they were; be it huddled together in a tent in the middle of winter, or settled down in a noisy bar full of pretty girls in the capital when they were on leave, or on a lazy Sunday morning at the Duchess. Now Polly was lucky if Mal accepted the thick, sugary espresso she brewed up with the air of someone taking a bitter, but necessary medicine. Sometimes she still didn't.

One morning, Polly'd found Mal's boots out in the courtyard by the well, hardly visible beneath an aged layer of snow, the leather cracked from the moisture and the shoelaces hopelessly knotted and frayed, soles coming loose. Polly'd dried and re-greased the boots thoroughly and replaced a few rusted nails and the laces, recovering function if not form. Mal acknowledged their reappearance in her life by putting them on without a word, possibly because even indoors a vampire in socks was just silly, but when asked couldn't explain how they'd ended up by the well.

At some points, Polly had allowed herself to hope the painful coming to terms with what had happened was done. The report had been long finished - she had confabulated something together with the objective that it had to make an ounce of sense and contained enough war crimes to entertain a room full of diplomats for hours while leaving out the more painful bits - and handed it in to Clogston, but she hadn't heard back from her.

The army was still stuck while the ruperts were negotiating the conditions of peace. But the military as such tended to oscillate between boredom and short stretches of excitement, and Polly had come to savour the boring bits. It was hard to teach the lads something resembling sword drill on a battlefield, where, at the same time, lackings in that area became most obvious.

She was in the middle of explaining one of the finer points of hands-eye coordination to Privates Mary and Smith when all of a sudden Mary dropped her sword.

"How did we win that battle again?" said Polly, exasperated.

"Handguns," said Mary, brightly, and added "sarge" only as an afterthought. The girls had clearly spent too much time with Mal, Polly thought. Or, admittedly, maybe with Polly herself.

"And do we have enough for everyone? No!" said Polly. Sword drills were the exact opposite of pep talks. "So let's get straight back to lesson No. 1: not letting go of your swords, ever, except maybe when you're hanging off a cliff but even then do try to hold on 'cos these things are expensive. You don't let go when the enemy comes charging straight at you. _Especially_ not then. You don't let go when you get distracted by shiny shit on the wayside. You don't let go when - "

"Nah, that's the corporal," said Mary, eyes fixed on a point somewhat to Polly's left.

"I drop my sword only on purpose!" said a voice behind Polly. "Do not be alarmed," it continued, "I have merely come down to watch the follies of humans. Come on, do something entertaining; I'm very bored. It is a very boring fort."

Mary pounced. Polly stared. Mal very nearly dropped a crutch, but stylishly got a hold on it with a minimum of flailing.

"Mal!"

"I am also very glad to see you again, private," said Mal's voice, somewhat muffled. "I really missed your sense of reservation and, uh, respect for personal space."

"I missed your talent for Cripple Mr. Onion," said Mary. "Can you imagine Corporal Wenzel loses every single game? Also, when you get your medal, you're buying us a round. We had a majority vote on that. And Rosemary always said -"

Rosemary was at that moment walking over to them, holding three leashes at once that in return held rather toothy dogs on their ends.

"I always said they're not that lurid if you actually feed them once in a while, and not with prisoners either," said Rosemary, and then looked over, taking in the sight of Mal. "Or weren't we talking about dogs? Good to see you, corporal, and we decided you're buying."

Mal graced Polly with a rather confused look and the dogs with a rather more vicious one.

"I don't know nothing about no medals," said Polly. "And take those dogs away, Rosemary, you don't know if they'll listen to you."

"They're misunderstood," said Rosemary before dropping to her knees and tickle one of them behind the ears. There was a considerable amount of salivation.

"Of course there'll be a medal," said Mary, hobby military historian. "The corporal is only the second Borogravian soldier to ever survive an Uberwaldean prison, and the first one did get a medal. So he's buying. I heard it's customary with military honours."

"That _is_ a happy thought," said Mal. "More shiny shit on the wayside? I'm in."

"Who was the first one?" said Polly, and Mary turned to her, apparently not believing her luck that she got to lecture her sergeant. "It was during the first Uberwaldean skirmish eight years ago," she said, in a hopeful attempt to add some suspense that probably wasn't there.

"Then I'll bet it was Sergeant Jackrum," said Polly. "He was everywhere anyway."

Rosemary looked up from her crouched position on the ground where she was still optimistically petting the dogs, and grinned. "What are you betting?"

"Next round on me?" said Polly. "I mean, after Mal gets the medal. Was it Jackrum? And I _said_, take the dogs away," she added. Even though Mal didn't give a sign that she minded them, Polly felt it was better to be over- than underprotective.

Mal shrugged. "Look at it this way, sarge," she said. "They'll eat Rosemary first, and then at least I'll save some money on drinks."

"Misunderstood," it came from the general direction of the ground. There was also some definite growling from the dogs.

"So," said Polly. "I can't stand the suspense. Jackrum?"

Mary looked around, making sure her audience was captive. It was admittedly also tiny. "Nah," she said. "Major Clogston! Of course, he was a sergeant then. He fled after a week. That's why he's leading this mission. Because he _knows_, man." There may even have been an ominous hand gesture.

Polly was rather more speechless then she liked to admit, even to herself. Luckily Rosemary took that moment of relieved suspense to lead the dogs back to their kennel at last, where the proceeded to haul themselves against the bars. They watched that for a while.

"Now, isn't that a bit of a surprise," said Mal at last. "Major Clogston? Chris Jam Sandwich Clogston? Probably where he learned to appreciate them if you think about it. What the hell. I'm baffled. I'm confused. I shall be shaking my head over this until next year!"

And, apparently, babble on extensively, thought Polly. She decided to take her chance and wink at Mal.

"I guess he does seem like a bit of a clerk sometimes," said Mary. "Hah, secretly he's probably the fiercest motherfucker around. Oh _sugar_, did I say that out loud?"

"I will pretend I didn't hear it," said Polly. "Major fancier."

"I, however, will never forget," said Mal. "Tag, you're buying."

Polly laughed. The last hours with the lads had almost felt normal, and then Mal had come down and it still felt normal. She didn't really know why she'd been so surprised that other people had missed Mal as well, and now showed it in such unsubtle ways. So maybe she had been a bit wrapped up in things. So what. Today may still become a good day, Polly thought, having lowered her standards somewhat after what had happened in the morning. Which she was definitely not thinking about.

"Can we get on with this?" Polly said, since the question of who was buying rounds had now probably been discussed to death. "Rosemary, where is your sword; Mary, yours seems to be lying on the ground; Smith, why so silent; position one, everyone, and try not to fall over until I'm back."

She took her vampire by the elbow. Mal was walking a little slower now that she'd been standing for so long. Behind them, there was excited whispering. "Hah, I _knew_ they'd make up," said Mary, "and you're paying my round, dog fancier." Their voices drifted off.

Polly felt a little self-conscious at that moment, and Mal apparently decided to ignore the overheard remark.

"I thought _I_ was the fiercest motherfucker around," said Mal in a stunning display of modesty.

"Nope," said Polly. "Sorry 'bout that. One hundred per cent of all green behind the ears privates agree. Major Jam Sandwich is fiercer than you."

"And who would have guessed they're handing out medals simply for remaining immortal at all times? Fancy that," said Mal.

"Wouldn't bet on it," said Polly. "I don't think they have enough metal, it all went into the guns. So I guess it's going to be an IOU or a warm handshake or nothing."

"What did we get after Nedevya?" asked Mal.

Polly racked her brain, Things had been a little chaotic then. "I think they went with nothing," she said. "Though _you_ got a gift hamper with about ten pounds of cheap coffee from an anonymous source, if you care to remember."

Mal snorted. "Did I ever say thanks?"

The anonymous source shrugged. "It was nothing. The lads chipped in."

"So," said Mal when they'd been walking for a while. "Are you very busy right now, or do you have a minute or something?"

So much for the day being good, thought Polly. "I guess," she said. "They weren't paying much attention anyway."

"Well, they're supposed to have been on leave for months now," said Mal. "And it's not as if we're doing much anyway."

They sat down on a bench that had a view of the whole courtyard. A hundred metres away, the privates were fooling around with swords, looking clumsier than they did during the battle, as if they didn't have to prove themselves anymore now.

They might even be having some fun. Polly was convinced that was against regulations.

She wouldn't be sitting here long, Polly thought, already the winter chill was creeping into her bones. The snow, the hopeful main gate, the dogs; a trifecta of wrong. She wondered if Mal even noticed the cold. She wondered why Mal was still here.

Mal had busied herself for the moment with rolling a cigarette between her thin pale fingers. The days of pre-rolled cigarettes were over; the quartermaster only stocked tobacco now and only if you asked him nicely. Mal could ask very nicely.

"Get on with it," said Polly.

Mal lit up. The roll-up was perfect. "So I guess I'm sorry about yesterday," she said.

"Thought so," said Polly. "Me, too. Anything else?"

"What's there for you to apologise," said Mal, "kissing me back? It was my bloody stupid idea. I'll own it."

Polly let out an almost silent sigh. She'd hoped they could just safely ignore this thing that had happened, to see if it stayed or went away on its own, but no such luck.

"I should have known," she said. "Should have known you were conflicted over it. Don't kiss people who're conflicted over it. Always served me well. Look where I am now."

"You're stationed in bumfuck Uberwald," said Mal, helpfully. "And I wasn't conflicted," she added, "I was being a self-centered bastard. I don't usually apologise for being conflicted. Important distinction."

"If it helps any," said Polly, "you didn't come across as such. Bastard, I mean."

Mal muttered something under her breath that might have been "humans". "Maybe a little conflicted," she conceded for the sake of local vampire-human relations.

Polly exhaled. Silly humans and the stupid conflicts they presented to the passing vampire. They'd spent the evening the way they'd grown used to, Mal'd nursed a coffee and pretended to like it, they'd smoked all the cigarettes they'd rolled up in advance, stretched out next to each other on Mal's impossibly narrow bed and trying not to die of boredom in this fort where they weren't _actually_ locked up.

And then Mal'd taken her hand, removed the ciggy end and kissed her fingers as if to give herself time to come to a decision, whispered a suggestion into Polly's ear and, upon her slow nod, kissed her mouth, slow, reserved, not at all what Polly had thought it would be like. Polly'd thought for a moment she'd been dreaming, and wasn't so sure if the dream made sense or not.

And then it wasn't even a dream. Then Mal had, slowly, slowly, tugged and drawn and shifted and suggested until they were almost comfortable and nobody was in any danger of falling off the edge of the bed, and Polly'd continued to very carefully kiss Mal and run her fingers through her hair and over the sharp edges of her improbably pretty wrists for long minutes, waiting for the pretense to stop working.

The pretense, though, hung around for a terrifying while, until some of Mal's nightmares caught up with them. Polly'd apologised then, too. She remembered that bit quite accurately, whispering "I'm so sorry" into the darkness and the silence again and again, until the vampire stopped shaking and articulated concisely that Polly was not responsible and could she be quiet now, some people were trying to sleep, and also could she please stay because it was cold.

"Why?" said Polly.

She'd been debating to ask that since she woke up that morning in that same bed, to stale smoke and that tense body she'd somehow curled against in her sleep, one arm thrown over her too thin waist and her hand on that inch of skin just underneath the hem of Mal's shirt, Mal's hand on it, keeping it in place and unmoving, and she knew Mal hadn't slept at all.

Mal'd been watching a speck of light on the ceiling, moving up as the sun rose, and she'd said, "Do you mind if I tell you a story?" and it turned out to be _The Story of the Vampire in the Cell the Night after the Soldiers Came Back_, which later turned into _The Story of the Vampire who was Out in the Snow with a Handful of Angry Drunk Soldiers and They Had His Knife, So That's Where It Ended Up Huh_, and then it was, briefly, _The Story of The Vampire who Refused to Open His Eyes so They Cut Through His Eyelids_, and then Mal stopped before it turned into _The Story of The Vampire who Came To in Her Cell, Minus Boots_ because it had been high time for Polly to start her shift.

"Because -" began Mal, and already Polly was dreading the answer. But the vampire's voice was level, apparently there'd be no more of this difficult stuff today; no more dreams, no more sudden revelations, just the facts of the matter.

"I don't know," said Mal. "Because I felt we were all due something nice for a change. A reminder that the world isn't all pain and ill intentions." She laughed. "Something to feed to the void that my memory is becoming, excuse the pathos but it is the truth."

"Did it work?"

"Not at all," said Mal. "This was all about me. I wanted to feel better about myself. And that's probably bad enough, but all I've managed is that I feel like I reverted. Obviously without the messy bits and in an arguably polite way. I'm sorry I subjected you to this display of selfishness."

"I see," said Polly. "That's all very understandable and I'm sorry you feel that way, but I was there on my own free will and I get to decide if I regret it."

"Didn't you say you do?" said Mal.

Polly frowned. "Now I'm confused."

"Awesome," said Mal. "Well, as long as we agree it wasn't particularly clever." She was watching her hand now, the one that was holding the cigarette; turning it this way and that, then spreading her fingers. She recommenced smoking.

"This is what it looks like," she said.

Polly had been watching the privates for a while. They did rather well when they got past the messing around, she thought. Her language processing centres soldiered onward on their own for a moment, then stumbled. "Sorry," she said. "Haven't been paying attention. This is what what looks like?"

"It," said Mal.

"Ah," said Polly.

"It isn't healing so much as it's vanishing without a trace," said Mal. "Same in here. I know of things that I can't remember. Some of them just come up. None of them feel like a proper memory, y'know, that you can get out and examine and put back in the past where it belongs. There are no traces where I can look for them."

"That doesn't make any sense," said Polly.

"Yes," said Mal. "Hence: the problem I have with it." She took a long drag of her cigarette, and then another. "I want proof it happened. And _then_ I want to forget." Her smile was bitter. "Probably why I've got this intense urge to keep telling you these things, because while I want them gone I don't want them _lost_."

"And I am such a convenient information dumpster," muttered Polly.

There was no answer for a long while. Mal flicked the half-smoked cigarette end on the ground, crushed it under her boot. "I'll stop," she said, and it was with such finality Polly didn't dare apologise. She knew that what Mal needed most right now was a friend she could rely on, and she also knew that being that friend stretched her too far.

"I can't do this, Mal," she said, not looking at Mal but toward the direction of the main gate. And suddenly -

"Mal," said Polly. Her hand was already closed around the hilt of her sword. May be awkward to draw sitting down. And Mal wasn't armed at all! Maybe she could hit someone over the head with a crutch.

Mal remained silent, and then Polly realised Mal was staring at the same point just behind the gates that she was.

There was a carriage. Several men wearing the characteristic black-and-red Uberwaldean officer uniform climbed off, and they were walking into their general direction.

One took a look at them and waved.

"Mal, we can leave if you like," said Polly.

"Not necessary," said Mal, finally unlocking her gaze from them and lighting up another cigarette, slow and mindful of every movement. "Just ignore them, they can't do anything out here. Not with Ankh-Morpork watching."

Polly swallowed. The four men were still advancing, and they were laughing.

"Huh," she said, looking at Mal from the side. She remembered the dogs, and Mal's lack of reaction. "All this coffee really is working."

"It's doing something, at least," said Mal, dragging a distracted hand through her hair. "Personally, I find this rather creepy."

_Why can't you just be happy the pain is gone,_ thought Polly, and than racked her brain for an inoffensive way to say it. She tried.

"Because it took all the rest with it," said Mal. "Not just the piddly memories. The coffee love. The silly, heady, unexpected yet persistent crush on you. The thing on the bottom of my soul that carried on and kept me upright and resisting when I knew I'd die alone, that's gone, too. I feel like I can't regain any of that without regaining the pain, and you know what, it even seems like a good compromise some of the time."

Mal flicked some ash on the ground. "But the truth is, there's nothing left except maybe my ability to feel sorry for myself," she said, "and what for, I don't even remember all that well."

"Well," volunteered Polly, who didn't really know what to say. "You're also really angry with Clogston and you still smoke like a chimney. That's there as well."

Mal's mouth curled at the edges. "That's not a lot for thirty-five years."

Of course, Polly had known Mal's age, but the fact that Mal was actually younger than Clogston and had been a vampire for less than Polly's life had never stood out so prominently as now, because the vampire always emanated confidence enough for at least a few centuries, while admittedly not the accompanying wisdom. Back when Polly'd estimated her age at about two hundred years she'd even found it a little intimidating.

The Uberwaldeans passed them, close enough that she could have spit on them. One of them really stood out, she thought, with his paleness and his black cloak and his ribbon; and then, much too slowly for her taste, they crept out of earshot.

"You never told me they had a vampire," she said.

Pause, smoke, horizon. "I guess I forgot," said Mal. Apparently Polly's vampire had decided to be difficult again.

"I don't understand," said Polly. "Why would they go to all these lengths if they -"

Pause, smoke, horizon, patience. "If they what?" said Mal.

"Had a vampire," said Polly. "You know what I mean."

"Ribboners don't do that kind of thing," said Mal.

"Yeah," said Polly. "Clearly, torture is superior."

Mal turned to look at her. "In my experience, it is," she said. "As difficult as that may be to believe. Fortunately, it's practically impossible to do to a vampire who isn't playing along, especially one who grew up as a human among vampires. Very formative, those years."

"Practically?" Polly had a really unfortunate knack for extracting the weaker points of an argument.

"There's layers of will," said Mal. "And not all of them are intimidated by violence. The breakdown would have to be more thorough than I can imagine, and trust me, my horizon was _really_ broadened in that regard." She leant back carefully, one arm stretching out on the backrest. "But most importantly," she said, "there's this pledge we all signed, you know. It isn't _only_ about blood. It also has a few very definite bits about socially acceptable behaviour, since vampires as a species seem to find that problematic."

"Mal," said Polly, "I've known you for three years, and trust me, I know when you try to distract me via information dump. Next you'll be telling me about your most recent holidays."

"Ankh-Morpork, right after that spot of bother at Fort Kneck," said Mal. "It was the most glorious -"

"How are you so sure?" said Polly.

"_A ribboner wouldn't do that_," said Mal. She didn't shout; she didn't have to. "Why are you asking? You don't want to know and I can accept that, but for Nuggan's sake, stop digging. I find it rather confusing."

"I don't trust him not to," said Polly. Suddenly she realised how much she was freezing, sitting down, and wriggled her numb toes. It didn't help much.

"You could trust me," said Mal. She flicked away the sorry cigarette end and got up shakily, gathering her crutches. "Don't you have a bunch of privates to train, Pol? I swear I saw them around some time ago."

"So what if I go easy on them these days," said Polly. "Not as if anyone has any urgent business anywhere. Where are _you_ going?"

"I'm talking to Christine," said Mal.

* * *

This is how Polly had, sometimes, dared to dream it would go.

In her dream, it was day four, and since it was her dream anyway, the weather had grown warmer. Not warm enough to melt the snow, since that made for soggy tents, but just under. There were a blue sky, and sunshine that made Polly's hair look nice, and Mal's black as the night coat that she'd left behind that warmed her thoroughly through the night.

(While it was a very fancy coat and Mal was probably going to demand it back, it wasn't actually magical; and very few people are cut out to enjoy camping in the winter. But this, after all, was Polly's dream, where anything went.)

The real day four had greeted them with a sudden sharp wind and hail, and Polly'd woken up before sunrise, curled around herself and wearing every single piece of clothing she'd brought, covered by two blankets and Mal's coat. And shivering in that nest of fabric she'd realised that after only four days she could hardly remember what it felt like, waking up with Mal wrapped around her, her head in the crook of Mal's arm and Mal's sleepy breath warm on the back of her neck. They'd most sensibly adopted that procedure in the late autumn because it raised the temperature from freezing to merely cold and Mal was insufferable when she was freezing and merely annoying when she was cold and in any case she had an irritating habit of panicking (stylishly) when Polly's lips were turning blue.

And Polly didn't really think it mattered if, in the minutes before they had to get up, she took Mal's hand and entwined their fingers till she was warm in each and every fingertip; maybe the first time she did that it marked some kind of transition in the way they acted around each other. Mostly it gave her the comfort that she craved more than anything and that Mal seemed willing to give, and that in turn made her heart hum.

But wait, she thought when she got to that bit, that was not the dream she was dreaming, just a bit of the past that had already been fading after four days. She painted dream day four in vivid colours, considered transferring it to a lazy summer day but eventually decided to keep the snow, because if she kept the dream realistic enough it may just come true. Maybe if she didn't wish for too much at once, just like you almost never got a pony for your birthdays but sometimes you got a wooden horse. For that purpose she even sacrificed the amazing frost-shielding properties of Mal's coat; after all, it didn't really matter if your lips turned blue in a dream.

So Polly'd got up that day a little stiffly, but the sun was shining, and there was Mal at the fireplace, warming her hands, and Polly said "You're a day early" (tough love from this sergeant!), and Mal looked up and said, "Morning, Pol, your hair looks nice" (the power of favourable light compelled her!), smile slightly lopsided, coffee brewing over the fire. Or wait, maybe that was too subtle for Mal, thought Polly as she was examining the dream, and rebooted the day from here.

It was harder than she'd thought keeping Mal realistic until she actually gave it some thought. Mal probably wouldn't just compliment her on her hair unprovoked. Certainly, though, she _would_ come strutting into the camp by way of the main path and claim this was the way awesome ninja vampires did it, and who but her would be the ultimate authority on that. Certainly she _would_ give an unforgettable impression of her antics later, at the fireplace, basking in the laughter, come make me coffee my minions, and the lads _would_ make her coffee, and certainly Mal _would_ compose some sort of epic acceptance speech for her upcoming medal, bits and pieces and acknowledgements floating up whenever Polly tried to talk to her. And _then_ she would say Polly's hair looked nice that day.

Then came the bureaucracy, of course, endless hours of debriefing, debating, Clogston consulting Polly for her strategical opinions because she tended to do just that lately. Someone would come up with a whole different host of very bad ideas and Polly would fight hard to keep her lads out of the more unusual danger and it was all very frustrating but Mal was back and that saved the day as far as Polly was concerned. Also, it made her somewhat nervous.

There was bathing. This was Mal, of course there was bathing. What with having to knock a hole in the ice on the surface of the lake, it'd have to be necessarily short-lived, and Mal would complain and complain about there being no bathtub and no servants who'd heat pails of water over the fire and no bubble bath and no (as a vampire, Mal had the advantage of not actually needing air) relaxing glass of wine and no shampoo and no vinegar rinse and no cucumber face mask and (Polly supposed she had it coming simply by nodding along to the litany) no loofah and no pumice and no brush and no nail file and no hot air imp and _no towels, Polly,_ could the world be any more cruel, but despite the complaining about the inadequate hygienic situation she'd come back with wet, quickly freezing hair, smelling of her expensive soap (she'd used up the whole rest of the bar and would have to actually welcome the gritty army soap into her life) and afterwards she was smelling mostly of smoke because she had to dry her hair at the fire, and Polly would have to insist over and over that it was barely noticeable.

And later, when Polly was out on patrol and Mal was so kind as to come along because she felt her impressions weren't doing her brave mission justice and she'd have to practise and also smoke a lot of cigarettes to make the slightly burned smell seem intentional, and then they might sit and look down at the snowy forest where even Mal wasn't seeing a damn thing and maybe, maybe Polly could then attempt a little honesty.

In her dream, she even got to say it first.


	8. Chapter 8

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 8**

**

* * *

**

Polly was almost done writing this day's report - sword practice with the privates, mind-numbing boredom, armoury appeared to be missing a wooden training sword; nobody would read it, but someone _would_ be filing it away and noting its absence - when there was a confident knock on the door. She sighed inwardly. Mal didn't knock, the privates who weren't out on guard duty were already snoring in their beds, so this was probably Clogston, and she didn't want to see Clogston. Polly hadn't had the chance to process Mary's information thoroughly yet and thus hadn't arrived on a conclusion as to whether she should be less angry with the Major, or even angrier.

It wasn't Clogston. It wasn't a private lost on their way to the bar, either. It was a blonde woman wearing the Ankh-Morpork Watch uniform.

"Sergeant - Angua, was it?" she said, slipping into the rusty Morporkian she'd picked up as a barmaid and later, on Clogston's suggestion, practised with Mal.

Angua didn't seem to want to beat around the bush. "I need to speak to your vampire," she said.

"Mal isn't here," said Polly, and Angua didn't even appear surprised. "Urgent business with the Major." It struck her that Mal had been with the Major for nearing three hours now. Very urgent, that.

"A mere corporal? Fascinating." Angua was holding a familiar-looking document in her hands. Now she waved it. "Major Clogston handed this to us in preparation for tomorrow. Did you write it?"

"Did I ever," said Polly. "Anything wrong with it? And do come in," she added, closing the door behind Angua in case anyone was listening in on them. Of course, she thought, with the presence of an Uberwaldean vampire in the castle they probably didn't have much of a chance not to be listened in on.

"It shows remarkable continuity," said Angua.

"Thanks," said Polly. "It's nice to see the effort honoured."

"By which I mean it's total bull, and it may fool a bunch of officers but it doesn't fool the Watch," said Angua. "Will the corporal be attending tomorrow? We have a few questions regarding -"

"I talked to Mal about it," said Polly. "He'd rather not, he's a little -"

Was it just her imagination or did Angua raise her eyebrow a little at the pronoun? "Shaken up?" Angua suggested. "I understand that, but, and I'm trying to be helpful here -"

"Which side are you on?" asked Polly sharply. She may not be much of a rupert yet, but she had an uncanny instinct this was a relevant thing to find out before dishing out more information.

"The neutral but intervening side," said Angua. "The side that appears to care about war crimes at the arse end of the world. The side that kinda hates that little weasel of Uberwaldean vampire lieutenant and fears that he will own the stage tomorrow if this little shopping list of cruelties is all we have to work with. What was your corporal even doing there?"

"That's in the report," Polly pointed out. "Right at the top. Intelligence. That's the usual -"

"Not what I meant," said Angua. "Why did you even declare war on Uberwald?"

Polly shrugged. "I haven't followed the meetings," she said. "I won't say a word on politics until I know the official -"

"Because they wiped out two Borogravian villages in the border regions," said a voice from the door. "Honestly, Angua, the one time we're _completely_ in the right -" It was Mal, in another stunning display of forgetting to knock. The familiarity with which she greeted Angua puzzled Polly, until she remembered her half-year stint in Ankh-Morpork a few years ago.

Mal limped over to the window, opened it and immediately lit up a cigarette. "Though declaring war on the whole of Uberwald may have been a bit hasty," she said. "You never know _which_ splinter group -"

Angua sighed. "It's vampires," she said.

"_What_," said Mal.

"Have you ever _met_ any of their officers?" said Angua.

"Have you ever _met_ a vampire?" said Mal. "Apart from me, obviously. We don't _do_ political splinter groups. We're the ones who splinter groups split away from."

Angua raised an eyebrow.

"So I think they may have had a vampire," Mal conceded. "But I didn't see his stripes and let's please not joke about this, and in any case, I don't think he played much of a role."

Polly nudged her. "Apparently he's a lieutenant," she said to Mal.

"Aw," said Mal, "a career. How nice for him." Her unease at the information was slight but there.

"It's a vampire splinter group," said Angua. "Same as last time, only, well, led by vampires now, and I see they didn't change a running system of underlings. Hence the sane Uberwaldean splinter groups are a little offended over this declaration of war, and that has taken a bit of smoothing over already."

"I see," said Mal, "it's not really the sort of thing you take back and say 'whoops', is it?" She thought about it for a while, but Polly was faster.

"We only met humans," she said. Indeed. The soldiers they fought at the Koebe Plains and later at the fort had been human. The guard she shot had been human. So far the only Uberwaldean they'd met who hadn't been human had been -

- all right, the vampire, but -

"Well, I do agree it's all a bit confusing," said Angua, "but this is politics."

"Why are you telling us all this?" said Mal, confirming that Polly wasn't the only one who found this a bit odd. This was probably the pre-officer mindset they were exhibiting, and Polly knew too well she was only a promotion away from participating in this shuffle of coalitions. She should better learn to make sense of it.

"For the really obvious reason that I want you to know," said Angua. "So these things won't take you by surprise when you attend the meeting tomorrow."

"I wasn't planning to," said Mal. "But we wrote a report! Did you read it?" There was a bright and very wrong smile.

"I'll be there," said Polly, hardly kicking Mal in the shin at all. "Opposing uppity vampires? My favourite pastime."

Mal sighed. "Okay then. I'll come and watch from the sidelines."

"Thank you," said Angua. "Let's hope this gets resolved soon." She shrugged, said, "I miss the city, what can I say," and turned to leave.

"Did Vimes send you?" said Mal.

"Why," said Angua. "Yes." The door closed softly after her.

Polly didn't want to think about vampire splinter groups, she felt it'd make her headache even worse and she already wasn't looking forward to tomorrow.

"By the way, ouch," Mal informed her, flicking the cigarette end out of the window and closing it to the cold. "What are you planning to achieve there tomorrow?"

"I thought," said Polly, "a dramatic reading of our masterpiece the report - I'm not sure if Clogston always tells us everything. That said, how was talking to her?"

There was the faintest of smiles, but this one might have been real. "It was all right," said Mal.

* * *

Polly normally didn't mind cats. There'd always been at least three at the Duchess, and they could be relied on for keeping the rats out of the larder, curling up on your favourite armchair, and being an obstacle on your way to the latrines in the very early morning. She may have admitted that some cats were downright cuddly. But all in all, Polly was not an animal person; one too many fleas from semi-friendly animals she'd tried to come acquainted with as a child had made sure of that.

Mal, on the other hand, had once mustered with a thin and vicious black cat firmly attached to her shoulder, smiling innocently and daring her to mention the presence of inappropriate tomcat. Cats loved her, that was one of the rules of the Multiverse. And somehow, they never got _her_ clothes hairy. Polly got cat hair on hers just from standing next to Mal at the assembly.

The fort was home to a particularly scraggly tribe of grey tabby cats, and when Polly came up from dinner, one had settled down right in the middle of her desk, not without leaving little paw prints of ink from her stamp pad and possibly saloop from a half-drunk mug of hers all over the report she'd finished after Angua's departure earlier that evening.

Polly sighed theatrically. The cat didn't budge, so Polly set out for cat removal. The cat ignored her efforts for a minute or so while _at the same time_ holding on to the surface of her desk by means of claws, then finally changed its mind about the best way of ignoring the human. It stalked off through the door to Mal's room, which had been standing ajar.

"Ah, you smelled the vampire," said Polly, yawning hugely. Apparently, the cat was making itself comfortable on Mal's bed. "Mal isn't back from dinner or whatever yet," she added, "but I'm sure you'll find some way to pass the time till she arrives. Oh dear, I appear to be talking to a cat."

If cats could snore, this one would have, thought Polly, as she lit a candle and sat down in her desk to copy this blasted day's report onto a clean sheet of paper. Originally she'd planned to spend the remainder of the evening going over her notes for the meeting tomorrow, but mindless work like this occupied her thoughts so much more thoroughly. She had almost thankful feelings towards the cat.

It would probably have been impossible for Polly to forget the cat in the cellar that'd taken up half a footnote in the report on Mal's captivity. Thus, Polly mused that maybe Mal could do with a cat sitting on her pillow. In any case, Mal loved them right back, in a most stylish and decidedly non-sappy way. Her love wore sunglasses.

The candle had burned way down when the door was opened silently. Polly only noticed from the flicker of the flame.

"You're still awake," said Mal, as she was limping in and shrugging off her uniform jacket just as silently. Her movement program had been prepared for a silent entry, and nothing was going to get in its way. Her mouth, of course, seemed to run independently.

Polly though for a moment. It was unusual that this would surprise Mal; she should have heard the pen scratching over the rough military issue paper from half a corridor away. There was one possible conclusion.

"You're drunk, Mal," she said.

For a moment, Mal swayed a little on the spot, then caught herself. "Mmmaybe," she conceded. "Had dinner with Christine and two Ruperts whose names I simply cannot recall. Impressed them all with my charme, anyway. Proceeded to drink them under the table, well, all except Christine, which makes two. Am still fairly sober, considering; 's not hard to drink a Rupert under the table. And did you know Christine drinks almost nothing at all, ever? Only eggnog for Hogswatchnight, remarkable woman. Always had a thing for spectacles."

"How abominable," remarked Polly regarding the situation as a whole.

"Didn't know you were being promoted," said Mal. "Could have told me." Her slight swinging motion, offset by crutches, brought her closer to the desk, which she proceeded to lean against.

"It isn't fixed yet," said Polly.

"Oh yes, it is," said Mal. "They're most impressed. _Most impressed_. You didn't hear that from me, I'm just a little corporal eavesdropping at the big kids' table. Military school, eh?"

Polly sighed, dotted a few 'i's and signed the report. Again. "Looks like it," she said.

"Faaancy," said Mal, and with that, she said down on the desk. Apparently, there were some semblances between her and cats. The inkwell tumbled most stylishly, and Polly just about managed to catch it.

"It's three years, Pol," added Mal. "A terrible drag, a waste of time and brains and the pretty years of your life, a place full of Blouses. _Adolescent_ Blouses. You'll be twenty-six before you see sunlight again. Metaphorically speaking. I hear they're big on competitive ball games. With horses and without horses. Think about it."

Polly leant back in her chair. For all the exasperating confidence, the air of knowing it all, and knowing it all better, Mal was sometimes fairly naive about the world of girls out in the country. "I'm getting a scholarship," said Polly. "This is the only shot at proper schooling I've got, Mal." She tried to stare her corporal down, but found herself at an almost natural disadvantage. "I can't change this nation by following orders all my life."

"Well, I won't be there is what I'm trying to tell you," said Mal.

_So what?_ was what Polly didn't say. Which was when she realised that Mal was, as usual, tackling these things from a side unexpected.

"Why are you still here, Mal?" she said. She was barely noticing that her fingers were folding the report up. Twice length-wise, according to military regulations.

Mal's hand was maintaining a tight grip on the side of the desk, and when she finally spoke, her tone was far more deescalating. "C'mon" she said. "I'm leaving when I'm well enough. Told you this before. You'll do all right in military school, I'm just mocking. You won't need me there." Then, in a much softer voice, she added, "maybe I'll get well enough to come back. Who knows." She slid off the table, landed on both feet.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," said Polly.

"I already did," said Mal. "If you care to remember, they were of the back in five days and woo the sergeant variety. Maybe it'll be five years and don't woo the lieutenant. Okay, I don't have a point here. Good night."

"You can't just come back to an army after deserting from it," said Polly. "Consider this a safety tip."

"Nah, that bit's fixed with Christine," said Mal. "Oh hell, I am going to bed. My head hurts. Maybe you'll find someone at that blasted school of yours. Ask me about it. I know all about canoodling with officers. Oh man, all these awesome beams in this fort and me with a bad knee. 'mazing what a vampire can do onna beam. With or without an officer.."

She didn't really slur her way through the litany, because Mal didn't slur.

"You're going to have such a hangover tomorrow," said Polly, and then a thought hit her. "Hang on. Is that why you did it?"

"What, d'you think I like hangovers or -"

"Drink," said Polly. "Reasons thereof. Inquiring mind wants to know."

"I drank because I'm fucking terrified of this fucking conference," said Mal, each word more pronounced then the last.

"Ah," said Polly. "And Clogston _let_ you."

"Christine, hard as it is to believe sometimes, possesses actual empathy. Or alternatively, the ability to respect the decisions of other adults, or possibly it's a sense of schadenfreude, sometimes I can't tell with her," said Mal. "And now I shall go to bed." She yawned, already in the doorframe to her own, darkened chamber. "My bed understands me. It's a good bed. It isn't _nosy_."

A few steps into the room. "Apparently, it is also occupied," Mal muttered from the other room, "why, it's certainly been a while." There was rustling as she apparently pulled away the sheets.

There was a scream from the other room, the sound of someone tumbling down or backwards, and a cat hissed. Polly nearly fell from her chair, then she thought, stupid, Mal must have stubbed her toe or something. There were enough ledgers on that damn floor.

She went over after a moment to check on Mal, and found her, white as a sheet, pressed against the far wall of the room, the cat crooked and somehow huge on the windowsill, still screeching.

"Kill me now, I am going crazy," said Mal, her voice a bare whisper. "I think I am seeing a cat."

"Yes, that's a cat," said Polly, confused.

"What, _another one_?" said Mal. She looked around. "I am seeing a dead cat."

The cat decided it was just about done with these shenanigans, jumped elegantly from the windowsill and raced through Polly's legs and out into the corridor. Polly wandered over to close the door behind it.

"The cat that just left?" she said. "That was most certainly alive."

Mal shrugged helplessly. "Must have been a different cat that also just left," she said. "The cat I saw wasn't there. Because it is dead. Not walking around."

Polly slowly approached her, in case sudden movements set Mal off on an even more bizarre route than the one she was currently taking.

"There was only one cat, and it was alive, and it's gone now," she said. "Sorry I even let it in, that was dumb."

"Polly, _I watched it decompose_" said Mal, her eyes still fixed on the spot on the windowsill from which the cat had been staring down at her. "It's dead. There were maggots. They killed it, I watched them slit its throat."

"Mal," said Polly, deciding to go with the story for a little while. "Who killed the cat?"

"Who do you think?" said Mal, apparently still trying to retreat into the brick wall, not once looking at Polly, and suddenly Polly remembered. _It was the only being in the universe that ever truly loved me_. "It'd come over a couple of nights and wake me, of course later I didn't sleep in the first place, and I'd pet it as best as I could and they threw it against the wall and slit its throat, Pol. It's dead. It can't be here. I'm seeing things that aren't there, and I've been so good with the coffee and I don't know what to do anymore, just kill me and _end this_."

Mal was clearly breaking down. For the first time ever since this all went down, she was crying. With two steps, Polly was over at her side and caught her as she collapsed. Polly decided it'd probably be best to sit her down on the floor for a little while. Mal was shaking all over, and Polly wrapped her friend up in her arms. Mal let her.

"You're not hallucinating," she said, in a voice that she hoped was soothing. "I saw it, too. You're pretty stable now, you haven't had a bad dream in days, what makes you think you're seeing things now? You might have seen things in the cell 'cos I think we can all agree that might have been a bit of a strain on you. I think that's far more likely." She knew as soon as she said it that she was going to regret this.

"It died," whispered Mal.

"Apparently not," said Polly. "Or maybe it was an entirely different cat. I must have seen dozens of them around."

"I died."

"You came back," said Polly. "You kept that promise. You came back."

The answer to that was more shaking with a sizable dash of hyperventilation, and Polly was this close to reasoning that holding Mal tight for the moment was really all she could do right now. _Pour coffee directly into vampire_ was probably out of the question. Luckily, a moment later she remembered _attach cigarette to vampire and ignite_, which was a somewhat more promising approach these days, and it seemed to work. Mal was still shaking, but in a cloud of the grey toxic smoke, her breathing eventually found a focus again.

"And what else," whispered Mal when that cigarette was already half gone. "What else wasn't real." The glow became so much brighter when she took in a deep drag. "All those bits and pieces, Pol," she said. "Remember the things I told you?"

"Yes," said Polly. "All of them."

Mal exhaled, and with that it was all gone, the shaking, the tears. "You'd better forget about them," she said. "I don't think these things actually happened."


	9. Chapter 9

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 9**

**

* * *

**

Nine hours later, Polly was convinced she'd never met a person she'd wanted to behead harder than Lieutenant von Unterberg of the Uberwaldean army. Or possibly it was Lieutenant von Unterberg of some Uberwaldean splinter group's army. Whichever it was, heads were going to roll.

Admittedly, Mal took a close second today. First she'd started pacing the room at five in the morning. Then she'd refused coming down to the conference room. Then she'd reiterated that none of the things in their report had actually happened the way they'd determined. Then she'd proceeded to not even consider Polly's choice words on obvious denial and getting a fucking grip on herself, reality, and life. Then Mal, who was somewhat less dramatic than the average vampire, had actually stormed out of the room, and what with the sheer size of the fort Polly hadn't managed to find her in time for the meeting.

And now. This. "These are some very serious allegations, Sergeant Perks," von Unterberg had said even though his fashionable lateness had meant he'd missed Polly introduction, and he'd leant back in his chair as if it were a comfortable recliner, not a folding chair of quality Borogravian craftsmanship. "So, why isn't your vampire here to make them personally?"

On the whole, the Uberwaldeans didn't seem particularly concerned about the serious allegations. During Polly's dramatic reading of the report, they'd nudged each other occasionally and joked quietly to themselves. And how did he know her name, anyway? Polly realised that Mal must have talked about her to them. But he'd still have to recognise her face...

The eyeroll coming from the Ankh-Morpork table was almost audible. "We can proceed without the corporal for now," said Commander Vimes for the third time today, and Polly got the slight impression that he'd probably hold von Unterberg down for her. And lend her a knife. And provide a handkerchief in case she got her hands dirty. "What we want now is a statement from your side."

A bland look crept over the vampire's face. "I really don't know what to say about this."

"Confessions or denials are popular alternatives in these situations," said Vimes.

Von Unterberg shrugged. "Well, as I arrived at this fort two days before the Borogravian attack, which if I might add was not only thoroughly unprovoked, but also - "

"If you weren't actually there for the whole ordeal," said Vimes, "what exactly is your role here?"

"As I _said_," said von Unterberg, "I was ordered here in order to handle one particularly difficult prisoner. And when I arrived -"

Vimes interrupted. "Has anyone in your group been here since the beginning?"

The vampire smiled. "No," he said. "I was informed this wasn't a trial, but that we were going to negotiate a paper on war conduct. My presence here is to ensure that all perspectives are included."

There was a groan from the Ankh-Morpork corner. "Carry on," said Vimes.

"Quite honestly," said von Unterberg, and actually hesitated, "I believe you have to have been there in order to understand."

"Do try," said Vimes. "I understand a lot of things."

Thin hands gesticulated, the gesture inappropriately reminding Polly of Mal. "Maybe. How familiar are you with reformed vampires?"

Next to Commander Vimes, Sergeant Angua grinned. "Let me assure you," said Vimes, "that nothing you have to say about reformed vampires could _possibly_ shock me." Polly really had to ask him for tips on deflating vampires.

"As long as we're all on the same page -," said von Unterberg. "When I arrived at the fort and had a look at that prisoner, I found a vampire who was clearly deprived."

"Deprived of what?" asked Vimes.

"Well, he never told us, did he?" said von Unterberg. "He didn't say what he transferred to, the guards were clearly overwhelmed, and I understand they couldn't even go near his cell towards the end. You are familiar with the concept of flashsides?"

There were looks of slight confusion on the Ankh-Morporkian side. Apparently their experience with reformed vampires didn't include the more bizarre bits.

"They're someone else's flashbacks," said von Unterberg. "'Someone else's' being the operative here. The vampire was hallucinating _things that happened to other people_. Are you following me?"

"Liar," someone said sharply, and Polly realised that person had been her. The vampire looked at her with a kind of benevolent animosity that made her nauseous.

"I must admit that I find this... explanation somewhat improbable, myself," said Vimes. "Let's hear Sergeant Perks' objections, shall we?"

Von Unterberg shrugged. "Certainly."

"You argue as though we only had the corporal's account," said Polly, feeling that all eyes were on her. "But we don't. There was also abundant physical proof." She'd decided she wasn't going to mention just yet that most of that proof had healed already.

"Yes, thank you, I read that bit in the report," said von Unterberg. "Very thoroughly. He's your friend, I gather?

"What's that got to do with anything?" said Polly.

"All these years of friendship and it's never happened before?" said von Unterberg, and once more Polly had the unsettling feeling that he knew a lot more about her than he rightfully should. "Flashsides can be very realistic and very, very contagious," he added. "Even when the vampire in question is unconscious."

_There hadn't been any moths in Nedevya_, Polly remembered suddenly and inconveniently. At the time she'd thought they were real. Only later, when her brain had unfrozen a bit, she'd figured out it had been much too cold for insects to fly. It didn't matter. Her memories of it still felt real.

"Even when the vampire in question is dead?" she asked.

There was a tiny pause in which she thought she'd got him. But vampires had centuries of learning how to lie. "Ah," he said. "Are you sure he was dead?"

"Of course," was what Polly wanted to say, and she said it eventually after a pause that everyone in the room must have noticed, but a nagging doubt had crept its way into her thoughts. She thought it'd been strange at the time. Uberwald a country full of vampires, and yet the guard she'd shot had not only failed to cut Mal's head off entirely, but also left a stake at the scene that he did not use.

Oh _dear_, she thought, probably weeks to late. _We're being played. Good one, Polly._ She thought the objective of that game had been no witnesses, when it really had been all about proving the witness unreliable - and the topic of war crimes would be off the table forever. And what was more fool-proof than making absolutely sure the one remaining witness _was_ unreliable in the first place?

She realised she'd really thought that last thought. Maybe Mal's doubts were finally sinking in.

"I will admit," said von Unterberg, startling her from feeling slightly guilty, "that the prisoner did probably sustain some injuries during his stay. But," and Polly's amazement at his confession died an unspectacular death, "from what I could determine these were all self-inflicted. It wasn't -," here he hesitated for an artful moment. "It wasn't a pretty sight."

"Mal bloody well didn't gouge his own eyes out," said Polly, who remembered the bite marks an Mal's arms and hands and thought, damn, that von Unterberg could fake sympathy very well. To the untrained eye, at least.

But Mal had said once that all ribboners were comrades in some way, whatever side they belonged to.

He turned to look at her directly. "Do you have any idea, Sergeant Perks," he said, "what deprivation _really_ means?"

Self-inflicted or hallucinated. Polly remembered how Mal's nightmares had ceased when she'd grudgingly went against her coffee aversion, how her wounds had finally healed. But Polly's memory was admittedly a bit shaky on the timeline, and anyway, Mal's wounds tended to do just that. Heal. Except for -

"We give him coffee every day," she said. "He still can't walk properly. It appears someone shot his knee?" 'You bastards' was what she thought she shouldn't really add, but oh was it tempting.

"Ah, yes, the handguns," said von Unterberg. "Weren't they an amazing piece of Borogravian technology that I can only wish we had as well?" As Polly was still trying to figure out why on earth circumstances were forcing her to remain polite to him, he added, "Of course, you declared war on Uberwald, if you care to remember, and I suspect he has an interest in maintaining his victim status in front of this conference."

Except Mal wasn't here and would probably agree with von Unterberg more than everyone else in the room if she was.

She saw Vimes lean back in his chair, whispering to Angua. _Did any of that make sense?_, Polly caught.

"Lady Margolotta?" said Vimes. "What do you think?" and a woman Polly had previously and inexplicably disregarded faded into the foreground. The name sounded vaguely familiar, Polly thought Mal must have mentioned her once or twice.

"I think that I would like to hear ze corporal myself," said Margolotta.

* * *

The search was unproductive, and Polly gave up after a mere half hour, figuring that if Mal actually _wanted_ to talk to her, she'd know where to find her, and in any case she didn't have the time for all these complications and instead went outside with the lads for a game of fencing under difficult conditions. Namely, it was the snow on the cobbled courtyard that had turned into soapy, slick sludge. After five minutes of flailing, she suggested going for the wooden swords until everyone regained their balance.

Stupid stubborn vampire. Polly'd promised at the end of the meeting she'd find her and then - what? Drag her to the conference? Sweeten her day by adding Uberwaldeans to it? Give everyone more reason to doubt her testimony, by way of herself?

And not only that. Polly felt with every nerve of a body - which was currently slipping around on half frozen mud in something resembling classic fencing positions - that they were on the verge of something historical, something that may just make war a little more bearable, and maybe if it became too bearable no-one would have a reason to end it anymore.

Mal wasn't anywhere on the grounds, either, she noticed.

It wasn't until very late at night, when her candle had burned down and she had an internal debate of replacing it vs. closing her book and going to bed seeing as how she'd almost, but not quite, finished reading that one chapter about Uberwald prisons. Incidentally, it had been written by the author's assistant at the military academy, a certain Clogston, C.G. Then she heard Mal on the corridor outside.

She hadn't been fretting, certainly, but she did get up and opened the door for Mal.

"Where have you _been_?" she said.

Mal's face looked bleak, she seemed tired and her limp was more pronounced than it had been this morning. Without a word she passed Polly and went straight into her room, sat down on the bed with some difficulty and went to remove her boots. The one on her stiff leg took some gymnastics.

Polly remained standing in the doorway, figuring that Mal had to look at her at some point, and she was right.

"Have you had your coffee?" she asked. She hated to be in this position, that she had to keep asking and making sure Mal was drinking her coffee because the vampire forgot and/ or refused it all the time. And she hated that she saw no alternative.

"No," said Mal, after a long while in which she'd removed her socks and stared at her toes for a while.

"Then I'm making some," she said.

"Don't bother," said Mal, stiffly removing her overcoat and uniform jacket. She appeared to be freezing without them.

"Well, if you insist that nothing at all has happened then you can bloody well suck this up and have some bloody coffee," said Polly, a tad more aggressively than she had intended, but a tad less aggressively than she felt.

Mal didn't say anything for a long while, so finally Polly turned to get the coffee machine going, pulling furiously at the crank. It wasn't until she arrived back with a steaming mug of the blackest coffee that Mal said, "I can, but fuck you anyway," taking the coffee from her hands.

Maybe Polly had hoped that Mal would finally lay claim to her memories, shaky though they may be. That she'd rather submit to Polly's order - disregarding the 'fuck you' for the moment - rather shattered that hope.

"Von Unterberg seems to agree with you," said Polly. "He presented this compelling narrative of ninety per cent hallucinations and ten per cent I don't know what, he says you did it yourself." Despite her obvious anger, despite not even looking at Polly, Mal seemed to listen up as Polly filled her in, in detail, on how the conference had gone.

"He does have a point there," said Mal, finally. The cup of coffee seemed a lost cause by now; she'd barely sipped from it during the last ten minutes.

"He bloody well doesn't," said Polly, not entirely sure of herself, but she _had_ just read that chapter, after all. "He admitted he wasn't even there for most of it."

"Let me rephrase," said Mal. "His story makes so much more sense than mine. It doesn't include one single undead cat, for one."

"For the mother of -" said Polly. "Mal, that cat was, one, alive, two, present."

"In _my_ story," said Mal, "they killed me, but look, I'm alive. They killed the cat, but it's running around. They held me down and fucked me, but I can't say who, when, _or even how many_, Pol, and maybe I just spread 'em for coffee, wouldn't have been the first time anyway. They had me in a cell and why didn't I just turn to fog and leave when I still could, isn't this ridiculous. Looks like a big old lie to _me_."

"Well, why _couldn't_ you?" shouted Polly,

"_I don't know why I didn't_!" said Mal. "Maybe because the real thing wasn't so bad after all?"

Polly shrugged. "If it helps you sleep at night -"

"It doesn't," said Mal, sharply.

"They shot your knee and you're still on crutches," said Polly. "Mal, you are allowed to feel angry. You don't have to be able to account for every little thing."

Mal looked at her leg that still wasn't succumbing to her will. "If I allowed myself to be angry," she said, after a moment's hesitation, "I'd burn this fort right the fuck down. I don't _know_ about the leg. And that seems to be the recurring theme, doesn't it?"

Polly wondered for a moment if she should allow this. Maybe Mal _was_ better off forgetting it all. Maybe Polly didn't even have a part in all of this. And maybe - this nagging doubt never left completely - maybe these things hadn't happened.

"In _my_ story," said Polly, and Mal looked up defiantly. "In _my_ story," Polly soldiered on bravely, "I had to change the washing water in the bucket four fucking times because you were such a fucking mess, and I don't care what von Unterberg says, you were dead at the time, not unconscious and hallucinating, and who ever heard of such a big pile of bullshit anyway."

She paused to take a direly-needed breath and also to let Mal get a word in if she liked, but apparently Mal didn't apparently preferring to stare at her.

"And it doesn't _matter_ if you did some of it yourself because they stopped giving you coffee," Polly continued bravely, "and it doesn't _matter_ if you tried to bargain because you shouldn't fucking have to in the first place; Igor said he'd never seen cruelty like it, and that from someone who used to work with vampires, excuse me but it's the truth. And that's no way to treat someone even if they haven't left when they could for whatever reason, and also, there isn't an inch of uncertainty about the fucking cat. No-one has ever been _not_ tortured in an Uberwaldean prison, so what the _hell_ makes you think you're special?"

There was a lengthy pause. The outbreak seemed to still echo in this tiny room. Mal's lips moved, as if she were trying to frame a sentence, and it took a long time before she said, in a very level voice, "Igor was there?"

"You're derailing," said Polly. "Of course he was there. And I told you, but you seem to prefer your own reality apparently."

"You told me you'd taken over from him," said Mal.

"I said I helped!" said Polly. "I'm a sergeant, not a surgeon. Why does it even matter?"

"I _thought_ you'd taken over from him," said Mal, again.

"And let me reiterate," said Polly. "He was there from the beginning. What does it change?"

"Everything," said Mal. Almost too slowly to be bearable, she got out a beaten pack of cigarettes, shook one out and lit it, apparently to give her suddenly shaking hands something to do. Her fingers cramping around the thin white cylinder, she drew in a deep breath and exhaled again, slowly. Drawing it out.

"Igors are not fooled by flashsides," she said, finally. "They're too used to our drama."

"I see," Polly said numbly. Funny how, of the two of them, she had been the one who had been mostly convinced about the whole thing and yet found it quite overwhelming all of a sudden. Maybe Mal's denial up until now had been just a little too comforting.

"Oh, dear," she said. "Oh, Mal." But this time, she couldn't simply reach out and pull her friend into an embrace; she'd never felt less welcome. Mal was clearly shutting her out by making a small glowing cigarette the centre of the universe of her attention.

The vampire smoked up in silence, tendrils of smoke creeping sideways in this room that already smelled of nothing else, and then she stubbed out the end, slowly reached forward, and put on her socks and boots again.

"Where are you going?" asked Polly. She felt helpless.

"I need some time alone," said Mal, looking around, then after some consideration taking up her sword.

"I understand," said Polly. "Please don't do anything rash."

That hint of something dangerous in Mal's eyes, the one she thought she'd noticed before, had grown into a glimmer. "Like what," said Mal. "Visiting them in their sleep and running them through? I don't think I'm quite there yet." She ran a hand through her hair in an attempt to tame the deshabillé look. "But, oh, it's tempting."

"Like falling off the roof," said Polly, and bit her tongue, but it was too late.

"What the hell, that wouldn't even work," said Mal. "Don't worry, Pol. I'm not quite there yet, either."

"But oh, it's tempting?" asked Polly.

Mal took a good hard look at her. "That wouldn't even work," she said, again.

Polly watched her leave down the corridor. Mal halted at the staircase, turned to look at her for a moment, and started climbing down.

* * *

Mal still hadn't come back the next morning, and after a quick internal debate of going down to the canteen for breakfast vs. just getting used to the loneliness already, Polly found herself at one of the big communal tables. Few people were down here this early in the morning and with so little to do, so Polly was probably lucky she had company at all.

Probably.

"Where's your vampire?" asked Clogston, who apparently never slept either. From what Polly had heard, the meeting had gone on until well after midnight.

"Mal's not my vampire," she said. "Uh, sir. I don't know. Mal's not on duty for another two weeks at least."

"I know," said Clogston. "Thought I could cheer him up. He must turn up here at some point." Ah, thought Polly; that must be why she'd stayed on even after she'd finished her sandwich.

The pronoun was noted and duly stored for later ruminations.

"Cheer Mal up, huh," said Polly. "Well, I, for one, am intrigued."

"Scratch that cheer," said Clogston, who apparently had put some further thought into the issue. "Let's go for 'validate'. It's early."

At that moment, there was a clink as the bottom of a small cup of coffee connected with the surface of the table. "Validate me already," said a vampire. "I promise I'll try and pay attention."

Mal didn't look any better than she had the night before. Her hair didn't lie flat. _Her hair didn't lie __flat_. What was the world coming to? She sat down next to Polly, and when she brushed against her Polly couldn't help noticing that Mal's uniform sleeve was slightly clammy and that her hand was icy to the touch.

Clogston leant back in her chair, got out a bag of tobacco and began stuffing a pipe, taking all the time in the world. Polly stared. Another compulsive smoker. At breakfast! If she ever got out of the army alive, she'd invest in a tobacco plantation.

"You were supposed to attend the meeting yesterday," Clogston said.

Coffee was not drunk. "I explained that to you," said Mal.

"You'll be there today?"

"Yes," said Mal, and Clogston blinked artfully, radiating a hint of the surprise that Polly herself was feeling. "Now validate me, Major," added Mal.

"It's not so much validation," said Clogston, "more of a curious observation."

"... This is like getting a sack of potatoes in layers of less and less fancy wrapping. For _Hogswatch_," said Mal.

Clogston looked at her, made a tiny gesture with the stuffed pipe in her hand, and Mal actually smiled a tiny smile that made Polly feel she was missing something, and passed over her lighter.

Clogston raised an eyebrow in a perfect, fluid motion while sucking on her recently ignited pipe. "Most Borogravian children would be happy to have potatoes," she remarked.

"_And then again for your birthday_. Not me, I was the most spoiled child ever," said Mal. "In other news, the world is flat. Do you know the wood craft shop in Wilhelmstraße, in the capital? Yeah, I got the big shiny indoor carousel. When I was seven."

They'd passed that shop, Polly remembered, and she'd gone inside to inquire about the price of a thumb-sized wooden horse, as a present for her youngest niece. She'd left the shop without it.

"So, after the meeting yesterday, I went over the reports on the recent battle again," said Clogston. It was confirmed, thought Polly: Major Clogston didn't sleep at night. Polly stopped short of looking for fangs or pointed ears.

"A curious detail about the battle stood out," said Clogston. "Perks here was the only one to note it down. The Uberwaldean army seemed to have been severely misinformed about several parameters."

"Oh, do help my memory," said Mal. "Wasn't that because you fed me a bunch of damn lies so the Uberwaldeans had something to torture out of me? Never seen potatoes that rotten, Chris."

"I never lied to you about the _size_ of our army," said Clogston. "I figured that was a little silly, since you possess eyes and a brain. Well, most of the time, at least."

"So, Christine," said Mal. "Let's pretend it's my birthday and I opened this shiny wrapped gift and found an empty potato bag and a tasteless joke scribbled on the tag. What does that have to do with anything?"

"That one lie," said Clogston, "was all your own."

Mal had come as far as lifting that as of yet untouched coffee cup halfway to her lips, but now she put it down. "What the hell," she said. "What the _fucking_ hell. More heroism?"

Clogston shrugged. "Apparently I underestimated you," she said. "And I apologise."

Mal stared at Clogston for a long moment, while smoke did what it did and ascended towards the ceiling. "I'd accept, you know," she said, finally. "But I don't remember a damn thing about this." It occured to Polly that Mal had no reason to believe what anyone claimed as long as she had no clear recollection to compare it to.

Clogston looked back, her expression softening for just one moment. "You will," she said. "I trust that you will. Until later, then." With that, she rose, leaving Polly with her half-eaten and cold bowl of porridge and Mal with her still not drunk cup of coffee.

She was well out of the canteen when Mal finally stopped staring at the space she'd sat. Instead, she raised the cup to her lips, sniffed, grimaced, and put it back down.

"Pah," she said. "It's cold." There was no indication that she would give the coffee another chance.

"Happy birthday, Mal," murmured Polly.

She'd expected a 'yeah, right', maybe. Instead, Mal had turned towards her. "I guess I may have dropped a hint there," she said. "But thank you anyway."

"I got you something," said Polly. "And I did remember it on my own," she added indignanly.

"Oh," said Mal. "Show me. What is it? Is it shiny? Is it soap? I hope it isn't potatoes."

"You could do with some potatoes!" said Polly. "But no, it isn't."

"Oh, you _shouldn't_ have," said Mal, almost, _almost_ gleefully." "What is it? Give it to me."

"Nothing much," said Polly. "Just a book I got it back in the capital, y'know, when -," she paused, suddenly this was harder than she'd expected. "I don't think the dedication bit is... appropriate anymore, I wrote it when I was -" _lying down on a real bed in a room with a view of the opera house, waiting for Mal to return from the city_ "a little hungover, wait, I'll just tear that bit off, good as new, don't ever write in books -"

"No!" said Mal. "No,' she repeated," and by now the canteen was filling with people, so Polly didn't fight about it. Maybe a hole in the ground would swallow her. It'd been known to happen!

Mal took the small volume from her hands, opened it gingerly to the first blank page, and Polly watched her out of the corner of her eyes as Mal read the few sentences she'd scribbled onto the rough paper. Mal's expression didn't change for a long while, but she did laugh out loud at the postscript.

"Of course I would wear a feather boa," Mal said. "I never stood in the way of a bit of travesty, did I?"

Polly was at that moment glad Mal hadn't remarked on the bits that had come before. An answer along the lines of _'Just_ the feather boa, or -' was tempting, but maybe a little inappropriate. "You like?" she said.

"What's it about?"

Polly grinned, happy this was for once going over well. "Cross-dressing soldier girls," she said. "Solving mystery crimes. At the opera. On dragons. There are a few pages where outfits may get a little skimpy. It was delightfully nonsensical, I thought it may be just your thing."

Mal shut the book carefully, holding it in her hands as if to admire the cover art, then looked up, locking eyes with Polly for a moment. "Thank you," she said, simply.

There was only one thing a well-mannered Borogravian girl could reply to that.

"You're welcome," said Polly.


	10. Chapter 10

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 10**

**

* * *

**

It pretty much went wrong from the start.

Even if one didn't count the incident with the swords (and Polly didn't see why she should be so generous as to not count the incident with the swords). Even if they said the man hadn't been one of them. Even if the person who caused the incident with the swords had now been safely led away.

Polly sat in the meeting, secretly fuming, while Mal next to her unexpectedly looked her most nonchalant. She'd even managed to flatten her hair again, possibly using a pot of glue; and was staring straight at the wall, or the floor, or at Vimes, who neglected to squirm under her gaze, or at Angua, who did likewise; but not at the Uberwaldeans. Polly would have liked a cigarette. And, possibly, to kill somebody. Mal, however, did not convey any desire in that direction.

Polly'd also have liked her sword back. But since everyone - except the Uberwaldeans, apparently - agreed that diplomacy generally worked better without weapons (interestingly enough, the Ankh-Morporkians still had theirs), they had lined up at the door, just like the day before, and had handed theirs in.

Mal had gone first and handed her sword in, with Polly second in line. Then, as Polly recalled, there was a lot of noise all of a sudden, and then someone in an Uberwaldean charged at Mal, who, in an exemplary display of the concept called paying attention to your surroundings, managed to grab Polly's sword from out of her scabbard. In a long but efficient movement she deflected the flourish aimed at her head, fell down from the force of it, but got back on her feet to disarm the man and very nearly behead him, too, and all that before her crutches even hit the ground. It may have been all the attention that kept her from the finishing touches.

There'd been silence, and then a drawling voice had said, "Good to see you alive and so well, corporal." He may as well have been clapping slowly, Polly thought, but then again, there apparently were some limits in style that vampires weren't prepared to cross.

That'd been von Unterberg, who had gone on to loudly interrupt Commander Vimes ordering the arrest of his murderous subordinate, claiming that the man wasn't Uberwaldean, that he was an enemy agent in a staged attack, and when all that apparently didn't work as well as he'd intended, he'd informed everyone in hearing distance that he was amazed to see the Borogravian's witness so astonishingly fit and capable of self-defence.

Mal'd stared at von Unterberg for a long while, and then she'd gathered up her crutches and got on with life. Her limp had really taken an unfavourable day to improve that drastically, Polly thought.

The day had then taken an unexpected, but drawn out detour towards the boring side by means of bureaucracy, and when Mal was finally called forward, almost two hours had passed. And then it turned out that this had only been the beginning.

"And your name is -" said the lieutenant who was writing the protocol today.

There was a pause. Everyone suddenly seemed anxious. However, when no-one actually said anything, Mal drew a deep breath, and began, "Corporal Maladict Va -"

Someone nudged the lieutenant urgently and whispered something to him. "Please skip the middle names," said the lieutenant. The members of the meeting relaxed.

Mal shrugged; all that breath, wasted. "Corporal Maladict Báthory," she said.

Suddenly, there was heightened interest among the two other vampires in the room, though Polly thought it seemed fake in von Unterberg's case.

"Any relation to Ilsa Bátoriová?" asked Lady Margolotta. The question appeared reasonably benevolent and not at all inappropriate.

Mal looked over to Polly for a tiny moment in what Polly thought was resignation; the Borogravians in the room knew Mal's file and would simply be bewildered at her lying about such ordinary a thing. Everybody had to come from somewhere. Nothing special about it.

"Ilsa is my mother," said Mal. Polly couldn't have been the only one who noticed the small pause; at least Lady Margolotta and von Unterberg must have done, too. She wondered for a moment if everyone else in the room was aware that these words meant a lot of different things, to a vampire, and sometimes it meant _person who abducts small children_. Margolotta nodded, almost kindly.

Von Unterberg leant back in his chair. Apparently he'd been waiting for a prompt like that. Nothing else could, to Polly, explain the crowing tone in which he'd interjected a smug, "You lie," into the conversation.

There was general confusion. "That's interesting, but not actually in any way relevant to our agenda," said Vimes, who was clearly already having problems keeping his patience.

"Contrary," said von Unterberg. "The chief witness is lying; how is it not? I have the pleasure of knowing Ilsa _personally_," he added, and Polly noticed Margolotta was shooting him a warning glance, which he ignored. "Ilsa doesn't have any sons." He blinked, once, innocently. "So, who is the man who's telling all these lies, and why do you allow him to continue?"

There was ugly laughter from his subordinates until, by the sound of it, someone got kicked in the shins. Polly couldn't quite explain that one, but apparently von Unterberg liked to coerce outings more subtly than that. On the other side of the room, Clogston leant forward almost imperceptibly. Mal, on the other hand, didn't move a muscle except for the one that raised her left eyebrow. Such an impeccable expression.

She was on her own now; denying what everyone was guessing already would rely heavily on the Uberwaldeans' discretion. There was nowhere to go except forward.

Polly hated when that happened in a battle. It turned it wasn't much prettier in this conference room.

"It's Maladicta, actually," said Mal.

Clogston picked up a pen and put it back again, not writing down a thing. Her colour-coded charts didn't seem to help this time. Polly realised Clogston hadn't known. Hell.

Vimes stared at Mal for a moment, then shrugged and said, "I guess it _is_ a Borogravian army tradition."

"Yes," agreed Mal, allowing the eyebrow to descend once more. "Very traditional."

"This is all most fascinating," said Clogston in her best diplomatic voice, which was agreeable with the merest hint of derision, and promised smooth solutions if people just did what she carefully suggested. Clogston drawled with the best of them. "However," she added, "I don't see how this bears any relevance to the report that we are at present discussing."

There was general nodding among the Borogravian officers. Most of them still appeared a little helpless when it came to women in the military and were generally happiest if there was a shared effort not to Go There, even though many of them had Been There and Back.

"That would depend, wouldn't it?" said Vimes, possibly because Going There was part of his job description. "Was this known to your captors, corporal?" Smart man, thought Polly. At last, someone was using his brain. What was the world coming to.

Before Mal could answer, von Unterberg interrupted. "It wasn't," he said.

"Of course it was," said Mal, possibly because she wasn't going to agree with von Unterberg about this.

"Huh," said von Unterberg, leafing through the document on the table before him, "it certainly isn't mentioned in this document here. So who is lying, the report or you?"

The background murmur increased as Mal directed all her attention to the other vampire. All her attention was usually quite a _lot_ of attention.

"Lieutenant von Unterberg, do you understand the concept of brevity at all?" she said Mal. She chose her words carefully and didn't, as such, lie. "I think I can say, with reasonable certainty, that I wasn't treated any different as a woman than I would have as a man," she said. "It therefore didn't matter. Unless you would like to claim differently?"

For once, there wasn't an answer from von Unterberg, but he leant back, apparently content with how this all was going. "No," he said after a moment.

Vimes looked at Mal for a long moment, then decided to let it go. "Good," he said. "If you could, now, in your own words describe the timecourse of -"

"Excuse _me_," said von Unterberg. "I thought we have already been put through the misery of this document. Twice."

"What are _you_ afraid of, Antonin?" said Mal. "Think I'll remember something extra?"

Von Unterberg stared back. Suddenly, the conference room appeared to be the stage of some hard-to-watch vampiric dominance thing, or maybe it had been all the time.

And if Polly were honest what surprised her most was that Mal didn't appear to be losing at once.

"That is not my name, Maladicta," said von Unterberg.

"I apologise," said Mal, and something must have slid into place, because suddenly and disconcertingly, a wide smile appeared on her face. Von Unterberg had run out of ammunition too soon. "You never properly introduced yourself, so I guess I just -" her smile grew even wider - "assumed."

She leant back for the moment, chair tilted dangerously but Polly could see that against all odds she was regaining her balance. Mal reached into her pocket - this gained her the increased attention of at least three Watch guards - and got out a pack of cigarettes. She shook out a prepared roll-up, looked around, looked at Polly, and sighed. "Typical," she said, and got up.

No limping vampire crossing a room had ever attracted that much interest. Von Unterberg looked up as she walked up behind him, trying to stare her down but not succeeding, and she lay a hand on his shoulder -

- no, thought Polly. Let's process this again. She blinked, evaluated the new sensory input, and came to the same conclusion -

- Mal lay a hand on von Unterberg's shoulder, said "Excuse me," and stole the room's only ashtray from the Uberwaldean's table. Her hand lingered for a tiny moment, and she smiled again when she removed it and someone was going to die.

"When you're ready, corporal," said Vimes. "That report, _please_."

If they ever got around to lunch, Polly thought, she'd have to remind Mal on how not to appear overly unhinged, but on the whole she thought Mal was doing rather well.

* * *

Polly'd prepared herself for several more hours of conference after lunch break, but it turned out to be only a short coda.

"I don't know who made it," said Mal, stubbornly, when everyone was still shuffling through their documents, debriefing their subordinates or improving their networking skills.

"It'll look weird," said Polly, nibbling on a dusty cookie. "And everyone else is drinking it."

"Not von Unterberg, he isn't," observed Mal.

"That's cos he's a plebe and also not a connoisseur," said Polly. "C'mon Mal, coffee is good. It's your raisin dexter. Drink it and rise above the people who chose tea!"

"Nice attempt at raison d'être," said Mal. "And how do _you_ even know that one?"

Polly shrugged. "It could be telepathy," she said, playfully.

"Really now," said Mal. She sounded awfully suspicious.

"Or maybe I found your epic love poem to coffee."

"You, Polly Perks," said Mal, "are a traitor and a bad friend. Did you like it? I did something clever with the rhyme scheme, it spells out c-o-f-f-e-e right at the the end... oh."

Polly grinned.

"Pass it over," said Mal, "what doesn't kill me makes me -"

Polly didn't actually see her drinking, but looked over when Mal stopped talking. The cup was half empty, and Mal's eyes had gone wide.

"This doesn't taste right," she said. "What doesn't kill me kills me? I am so confused."

Polly sampled the offending cup of coffee. "It tastes completely normal," she said.

"It is incredibly salty," said Mal. "How can you not _taste_ it, you chamomile tea drinker, you uncaffeinated layperson, you -"

"Well obviously I don't have your refined tastebuds, but -" said Polly. She didn't dig the tea, but had been feeling a little queasy all day; it may have been the sad attempt at porridge that morning.

Mal was suddenly looking alarmed. "Is von Unterberg looking here?"

Polly raised her head slightly and, she hoped, sneakily. "Yes, he is," said Polly. "Probably 'cause he hates you, but hey. Why did you call him Antonin?"

"Oh, I figured it all out," said Mal. "Tell you _later_. Get out of the way." She was getting up just as the people in the room were finally settling in and the bustle died down.

"Mal!" hissed Polly. "You can't just -"

Mal leant down to where Polly was still sitting. "This is when the fun begins," Mal said softly. Then she straightened and quickly made her way to the door, every movement under incredible control. Before anyone could have said anything, she was out. The door snapped shut with a polite noise.

Polly wasn't going to go after her erratic vampire at first, but then she caught von Unterberg staring from the abandoned cup on her table to the door and back. Something was going incredibly wrong, like a joke that she wasn't in on and probably wasn't going to find funny either, and after an apologetic look at Clogston she was out of the door fast as a bolt of lightning, albeit one decelerated by the limits of the human body. When she arrived outside, she almost went past Mal.

"Well, someone didn't get far," she said. "You all right?"

There may have been an answering murmur of "stupidstupidstupid_stupid_".

The vampire was leaning against the wall of the corridor, and it took Polly a moment to notice that she didn't look all right in the least; she was breathing heavily, one shaking hand over her forehead. It looked most dramatic.

"Mal?" she said urgently. "Talk to me. What's up?" They'd have maybe a minute before someone was going to look for them, that Vimes really wasn't very patient, she thought, and then she noticed the tiny baubles of sweat on Mal's face, and her lips that quickly turned an alarming shade of violet. They blistered.

"Remember when I told you about poison?" asked Mal, her voice rough, a bare whisper, and Polly took her arm to keep her up, and not a moment too late.

"Doesn't work on vampires," said Polly. "Come on, look at me, Mal, good girl, oh _shit_ I'd better get Igor -" Mal's pupils were seriously dilated. This didn't look right. "Also, exceptions to the rule," said Polly. Mal's breathing slowed down to normal and then way past that. "Mal, c'mon, any idea?"

"Salt," said Mal. "S'meone must've blessed the _don't leave me alone_" and with that she collapsed.

It was two staircases and a corridor the infirmary, Polly calculated, and it'd probably be quicker to run all the way and get Igor and a stretcher. But the people in the conference room already became uneasy, the Watch guards had been uneasy to start with, and maybe in a minute they'd spill out to have a look at what was going on.

Don't leave me alone, she thought. So she carried Mal.

* * *

The rest of the day went more or less as expected. Polly didn't return to the conference room until an hour later, after she'd been reasonably convinced that Mal wasn't going to die for real.

The members of the meeting greeted her with a collective expression of Rupertesque patience. Apparently they'd decided to bump up the next point on the schedule. Nevertheless, she had the room's undivided attention.

It didn't surprise her that the coffee cups had already been cleaned away, but if she'd understood Private Igor's explanations correctly (he'd made them among several choice remarks about the drinking of mysterious coffee of unknown origin among people who'd like to see you dead), it wasn't actually provable, nor relevant to anyone who wasn't a vampire, that the coffee water had been tampered with.

"What happened, sergeant?" asked Clogston. "Where is the corporal?"

All those turned up, politely interested faces. "Mal had an unfortunate case of sudden holy water poisoning," said Polly.

This had the unexpected effect of putting a bit of a dent in Clogston's composure. "_What?_" she said.

"My thoughts exactly," said Polly. "Permission to arrest the Uberwaldeans? Uh, sirs?" So maybe she was jeopardising the promotion once more, but then again, no-one, not even ruperts, could be that blind to the constant laughter, raised eyebrows and thinly veiled threats.

"Nice try," said von Unterberg, and Polly would have been rolling her eyes if she hadn't been tempted to kill him so very, very hard. On her way back, she'd even made a detour to her office in order to retrieve her age-old and splintery stake, which was at this moment a reassuring weight underneath her jacket. Originally, it'd been meant for certain Mal-related incidents. She'd have loved to use it on von Unterberg instead.

"Sergeant," said Vimes. "You are officially accusing these men of poisoning a witness?" He seemed oddly happy despite the bad news, but then, von Unterberg had trampled on everyone's nerves nerves continuously, and Vimes was by no means an exception.

"Commander, you aren't going to take these amateur dramatics seriously, are you?" said von Unterberg. "Really, holy water? How clever. Not traceable, doesn't leave a body, and instead of a lab all you need to make it is a prayer? Remove the unreliable witness with the inconvenient memory issues and frame it on the evil Uberwaldeans, that's quick thinking. I command you, sergeant, wish I had you on my side."

He was actually clapping slowly. So he did have it in him, thought Polly, and mentally added, _My vampire is cooler than your vampire_. Vimes looked just about ready to charge at him with his bare hands.

"Well, I don't know but you've certainly given this more thought than I ever did," said Polly.

"I bet you'll be presenting someone else tomorrow," said von Unterberg. "Who'll it be? A 'prison guard' - " there were hand quotes, Polly hadn't actually ever seen those in action and she'd have to ask Mal if those scored even worse than the slow clapping, " - with an unexpected Borogravian accent? A hired actor with painted on bruises? Or another poor sod who most inexplicably can't even remember the names or faces of the people who allegedly tormented her for five weeks?"

"Nah, too fancy," said Polly. "We'll be presenting Mal as soon as he's recovered." A murmur rose. "Y'know what happens if you expose a vampire to something repeatedly?" she asked, conversationally, her voice carrying. "Like, I don't know, burn them with holy water? Of course you do, you _are_ one. Lack of foresight?" She advanced on him. "They build up resistance," she explained helpfully to the room at large. "I suspect it's hard for _you_ to understand that a vampire could ever evolve."

In Mal's case, what didn't kill her really did have a potential to make her stronger. Eventually. It still made Polly sick to her stomach to realise how _close_ it had been and admittedly she felt a bit like a fraud for making this triumphant speech already. Polly reminded herself that Mal was going to be okay, and that in any case she didn't get to have many triumphant speeches in her life and should better make it worthwhile.

There was a cherry to be put on top, still. She was standing directly in front of von Unterberg now.

"Prove it," he said, crossing his arms. He didn't look amused now. "Prove any of these outrageous allegations, I dare you to try."

"Oh, I can't," said Polly. "_Antonin_," she added experimentally.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed that Vimes appeared disappointed but also interested.

The effect was most satisfying. Von Unterberg rose from his seat, and a split second later his subordinates got up as well. "We're leaving you to this farce," he said. "Gentlemen, _ladies_ - I wish you a good day. I'd love to claim differently but I have never seen something so unprofessional in my life." They turned to leave.

"Oh, and I've got my regiment to stand guard at the infirmary," said Polly conversationally. "They all have stakes and I'm afraid they're a little emotional about this, so I suggest you leave that area alone." Her words were pointedly ignored and the door swung shut.

Vimes whispered something to Angua, who shook her head apologetically.

"If you excuse me," said a voice somewhere behind Polly, with unexpected authority. There was a rustle of fabric as Lady Margolotta rose. "I will attempt to... talk to them, commander" she said. "Do not be alarmed if I don't rejoin you. I think have seen everything I needed."

She smiled at Polly as she left. It was a little alarming, but Polly thought they were on the right track.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** 1) Second to last chapter (zer grand finish will probably be posted on Wednesday). 2) That bit about Clogston (you'll know it when you see it) _demanded_ its way in there. I deleted it twice, moved it once. It's still there, so, in conclusion, um.

* * *

**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 11**

**

* * *

**

Strange, Polly thought later that day, that after all these weeks they were right where they had started. The infirmary lay ghost-like in the moonlight that came dripping through the high windows - at least until Polly lit a candle in consternation - and there was not a living soul in sight, except for her.

Oh no, she thought, this _was_ different. Mal was warm and breathing this time. Maybe they'd be all right when she'd wake up.

The army was nothing without dreams.

At least this time Polly had been early in getting over the incredible awkwardness that was talking to an unresponsive person in a darkened room, probably because she'd had a lot of practise lately, and she'd already debriefed Mal on the subject of safety, namely, Mal's, and the guaranteedness thereoff, since the Uberwaldeans had presumably left and the lads were standing guard. She told her how they'd asked if the rumours were true about Mal, Polly'd shrugged, what rumours? and she should know what rumours because she'd been there, and that had been that because they'd trained the lads well, eh? And then, briefly, something about the local bird population.

Somewhere in a neighbouring room, a clock stroke once and stopped. Polly thought that maybe she could go to bed after all as soon as she finished the first chapter of Mal's book that she was reading to her in the dingy candlelight - she supposed fictional cross-dressing soldier girls were infinitely more interesting to Mal than birds, local or otherwise - when the door to the room opened almost silently and a thin sliver of light fell on a particularly rude word on her page.

Polly looked up. Outlined in the doorframe was Clogston, apparently finally released from the endless meeting that Polly and Mal had, for lack of a better term, left early.

"Evening," said Polly. Clogston didn't come closer, leaning against the frame. Polly felt watched.

"I thought it was only a corrosive," said Clogston eventually. "Not a poison."

Polly closed the book, with a silent apology to Mal. "It's both," she said. "Or nothing. Depends on who you are."

"Ah," said Clogston. "Fascinating. A really clever idea. Could have been one of mine."

"You don't believe what von Unterberg said, do you?" said Polly. "'cos I didn't think this one up." Then something occured to her, and her eyes narrowed. "It wasn't one of your clever ideas, was it?"

"Were it one of mine I'd have made sure the cup went to von Unterberg," said Clogston. "Why didn't I think of it? Really, Polly." Polly had never thought of Clogston as the poisoning type before, because really, why poison someone when you can set an army of thousands on them?

"How is the corporal?" Clogston added, and only then she left the doorframe and came a few steps closer.

"Better," said Polly, looking down on Mal, who appeared to be sleeping, even though it didn't look particularly restful. It was the kind of sleep that said the world could go screw itself as far as the sleeper was concerned, and then complained when the world didn't comply. It was a statement. Mal had made a similar one after Nedevya, too.

There'd been one nightmare so far, in which Polly had gone to have a smoke with the lads. She thought it was a good quota.

"Interesting," said Clogston.

"How did the meeting go?" asked Polly.

"With the Uberwaldeans gone, there's really not much of a point to it," said Clogston. "Of course we don't have a treaty."

Polly sighed. Just as expected. "Well, then," she said, "we'll pretty much have to try for one again, don't we?"

"Apparently Colonel Bergmann thinks such a thing would be undignified," said Clogston. "I told him my dignity would survive, but I haven't received the orders yet. In any case, I don't think it's possible with von Unterberg, he seems just a tad uncooperative. Worse, he's an uncooperative _lieutenant_. That's not much in diplomacy."

"They've got one gun," said Polly. "They've got better iron than we have, and sulphur that we don't have at all, and dwarves that we've abominated. It won't take long until they've armed up, and the only thing that'll change is that more people will die." She sighed. "Getting shot at is vastly more undignified than pushing for a treaty while we have the upper hand, tell Bergmann that."

"_I_ know that," said Clogston. "But some of them have never _seen_ a front, it still surprises me after twelve years. Also, your promotion is through; I've just finished the letter of recommendation. You can start military school next spring."

"Thanks," said Polly, watching an unmoving Mal sleep, somewhat uncomfortably aware that Clogston was doing the same thing very thoroughly. "I guess. May I ask you a personal question?"

"That would depend on the question, wouldn't it?" said Clogston. "Go for it."

"The promotion is secure?"

A glint of a smile in the candlelight. "It is."

Polly exhaled. "Why Mal?"

Clogston's expression lay perfectly motionless again. "I've explained that before," she said. "The corporal is -"

"I _did_ say personal," said Polly. "C'mon. Mal isn't exactly discreet with this stuff."

The pause that followed told her that she probably didn't know half of it. It was a rather talkative pause.

"Because he's the only one in this army who can quote plays without amusingly placed balloons in them," said Clogston finally, "and, in a most interesting personal union, the only one who actually knows the long-lost ninety-ninth verse of the hedgehog song." She paused for a moment. "The one about the fruit fly?" she suggested.

The answer sounded neither entirely honest nor thorough, Polly thought, but then again the question _had_ been private. At least Polly'd waited until after the promotion was fixed.

They'd seen the opera in the capital only months after it had been un-abominated, Polly and Mal, and Polly would never forget glancing over at her dashingly clad comrade in the dark, seeing her beatific smile at the incomprehensibility of the drama on stage, the one that was usually reserved for perfectly brewed cups of coffee.

"Also, Clogston interrupted her train of thought, "because he's a lying bastard."

It was such a rare thing to hear Clogston use a word that didn't seem at home at a coffee party between cream eclairs and _would you be so kind as to pass me the sugar tongs, please_, that Polly's lips formed a silent 'what' all on their own.

"Corporal Maladict," said Clogston, as if Mal was going to wake up by the sheer force of a direct address.

Mal stirred slightly. Polly was shocked. She was even more shocked to hear a small voice from among the sheets say, "Go 'way."

"My adjutant made the coffee," said Clogston. "No-one else could possibly have tampered with it. Explain yourself."

"What the hell, leave Mal alone," said Polly. "Sir."

"I have a headache," the sheets claimed.

"I have a brainache," said Polly. "Mal, to you, too, I say, _what the hell_. What is happening here?" Fretting at bedsides of close friends somewhat depended on their unconsciousness, Polly thought, and now Mal had gone and - been awake the entire time? She hoped not. Polly'd never hear the end of it now.

"Well played, corporal," said Clogston. "I admit I may have uttered a slight desire to be rid of von Unterberg as permanently as possible, but do explain, please, _what exactly you were thinking_."

"Come back _later_," said Mal. "I'm miserable, I'm poisoned, I've never had a hangover like this. You can't hold me accountable for the things I say now."

"Oh, I will," said Clogston. "And you can stop faking, little vampire."

There was a groan from the depths of the bed. "'m not," said Mal.

"You are," said Clogston. "This is, in fact, one of the major points of the conversation that I am trying to have with you, corporal."

"Well, then, Major, I'm _not_," said Mal. "Did all this look nicely convincing to anyone? Thought it did." Apparently, she'd decided she may just as well give up on trying to hide in the sheets and at least pretend she was fully awake now.

"All right," said Polly. "Guess I can send the lads to bed now. Guess you don't need protection from _other_ people. As such."

"Uh," said Clogston, before Polly could even get up. "We're all of course very upset, but I wouldn't go so far as to say _that_."

Polly felt like one single big red question mark. That was getting angrier by the second.

"Von Unterberg did try to poison me this morning," said Mal, helpfully. "Remember that coffee at breakfast that I refused to drink?"

"Yeah," said Polly, rolling her eyes. "That really was a red flag."

"I saved it. Did you think I thought this up all by myself?" Mal asked. "'course not. I merely chose the time to better suit my needs."

"Oh, you mean he's not an angel of innocence, good thing we figured _that_ one out, Mal," she said.

"_What needs?_?" said Clogston. "The honourable discharge is still on offer, as you undoubteldy know, so. What on earth were you trying to achieve? You could have died!"

Polly thought it was a strange thing to see Clogston so concerned.

"Yeah, well, seems to be a commonly accepted side effect of clever plans involving my person," said Mal sourly. "You said the conference wasn't going anywhere," she added. "And then I met von Unterberg and thought, oh boy you weren't lying, what a complete tool, and then I thought, oh dear, does he seem a little familiar or what -"

"Why'd you call him Antonin?" interjected Polly. Maybe they could clear that bit right up with the rest, she thought.

"And then I realised that no-one was going to convince anyone of anything," said Mal, who apparently didn't like whereever Polly's train of thought was going and therefore boarded another one. "He knows fully well what went on, better than I do in fact, and I wasn't going to subject myself to endless hours of can you prove this and can you prove that, are you sure you didn't claw your own eyes out in the throes of deprivation, can you prove that you didn't drink all that coffee because you like coffee so much. So I spoke my piece and went on to employ the great Borogravian army tradition of fighting dirtier than the enemy, and did I ever win, and he knows. _Epic, awesome, glorious, thank you_. Would do it again anytime, Chris, now go 'way and let me sleep. I'm keeping Polly."

"Why _did_ you call him Antonin?" said Clogston, appearing unimpressed by the monologue.

Mal yawned. Insubordination had never been so sleepy. "'cos that's his _name_," she said. "Bit like mine's Maladicta. Are you being deliberately obtuse or something."

Clogston shrugged. "Very well, then, corporal," she said. "I suppose we can do without a court martial for now. But do tell me next time you're planning a stunt like this."

"Nah," said Mal, "I couldn't have told you the truth, it had to be convincing, yes?"

There was a testy pause. Clearly, someone had to learn to be the bigger person, and it wasn't going to be Mal. "Thank you, that would be all," said Clogston, eventually, and, more to herself, "damn underlings, must they always _learn_."

Ah, thought Polly. A joke. The military was never all that funny, so she gave a dutiful smile. Must nurture the beginnings.

"Okay," said Mal. "I must admit that maybe I faked a little. But not all of it!"

"Good night," said Clogston. "If word of this gets out, I'm holding you two personally responsible." With that, she left, closing the door behind her silently. Polly hoped the lads hadn't tried to listen in too obviously.

"Stupid stubborn vampire," she said.

"But I _won_," said Mal. "I like winning. It was kind of important to me."

"You know what's kind of important to me?" said Polly.

"Me?" suggested Mal innocently.

"Ha," said Polly. "More the fact someone almost succeeded in poisoning my corporal, at breakfast, while I was there and didn't know about it. I demand to know about each and every poisoning involving your person, is that understood?"

Mal shrugged. "If you insist."

"_Why didn't you tell me?_," said Polly. "I'd have raised so much hell, so hard."

"Because," said Mal, "the proof is in the eating of the pudding or whatever it is you lowlanders say, i.e. the proof of holy water is not in the coffee cup but in the poisoning, so there wouldn't have been any proof anyway, but now there is. You'd just have fretted about my safety if I told you."

"Mal," said Polly. "I have been fretting over your safety for weeks now. Also, I'd have suggested application of poisoned coffee to von Unterberg's face. There? Proof." Clearly, great minds thought alike, and, by extension, Clogston must be a great mind.

"Proof that _I'm_ the murderous bastard," said Mal. "I want _him_ to face this responsibility. it's not a hard concept, really. Except one apparently has to go to great big lengths in order to fight dirtier than him, that bit was quite boggling." She added something that Polly didn't understand the first time.

"Sorry?" she said.

"I said, thank you for staying with me," said Mal.

Polly watched her for a little while longer, book on her knees, candle burning down, with a look on her face that she hoped was sternly disapproving, and thought.

"I guess tomorrow _will_ be von Unterberg-free," she said, finally. So maybe disapproving had been an unrealistic goal.

"See?" said Mal. "I did you all a favour. I bet Christine'll be giving me a medal soon for being awesome and getting rid of him. He probably left his spies, anyway, so if you have some spare time you might want to look in the kitchen."

Yeah, right, thought Polly, find the cook who said a prayer over the coffee maker. That would be interesting. She yawned, speculated whether Igor would kill her if she lit up a cigarette in the infirmary.

"You can stay if you want," said Mal.

"Well, if you absolutely insist," said Polly.

"I said," said Mal, "you can stay if _you_ want."

"Right," said Polly. "Why would I _want_ to sleep in an armchair, I - oh, friendship, loyalty, support, I get it. I hate my office, anyway."

"Good thing I'm here to put you up," said Mal. "By the way, I can't _believe_ you got Chris to say that. I always thought she liked my sense of humour! And my sense of fashion. And the vast depths of my intellect. And that I'm pretty and smell nice."

"Your modesty, more like," said Polly. "I get it. You, corporal, are a sleep faker and an eavesdropper. Was it just me or is Clogston hiding something?" In her experience, Clogston was always hiding something, but today it seemed to had gone further than normal. Also, Polly was a naturally nosy person.

Mal didn't blush much and wouldn't have in a situation like this, anyway. "All right, all _right_," she said.

Polly blinked. "All right what?" she said.

"So I can't believe I'm admitting this but I slept with her," said Mal. "Happy?" She didn't sound particularly annoyed, though.

Polly would have sat down at this, but found that she was sitting already. "Well, I hope it was good," she said, because it was the first thing on her mind and also, her usual reaction to Mal being overly adventurous.

Of course, she'd forgot what Mal's usual reaction to that question was. Too much information, that was what it was. "There were some good bits," said Mal. "There also were some bad bits so I guess this should average out to adequate, which is of course unacceptable. I'm afraid I got a little sulky after and she tried to say something helpful and I had to shush her; awkward." Suddenly and disconcertingly, she grinned. "Also, if you thought there were circumstances that stopped Chris from giving orders you were quite mistaken. But that was one of the good bits, so."

"Wait," said Polly slowly. "When was this? Did I miss something?"

"Wednesday," said Mal. "What? I can't be brooding all the time." It sounded vaguely bitter.

Polly did some not particularly complex calculations. Then she said, carefully, "I rather got the impression this morning that she had no idea that you -"

"I suggest you use your imagination, Pol," said Mal with an unabashed smile. Polly groaned. Her imagination didn't need prompting, having been extensively trained by Mal's elastic sense of the appropriate. "I never said anything definite," added Mal. "These were the terms and it turned out very interesting. You should try it some time!"

"Ah," said Polly. This rather summed it up for her. "I don't know about you, but I want to know if they manage to trick the cow herders with the funny hats," she said, in order to change the subject. "Want me to read on?"

There was an affirmative "Hm", and Polly read on. There were only a couple of pages to go in the first chapter, and the cross-dressing soldier girls managed to not only trick the cow herders, but also - swiftly _and_ boldly - stole their hats.

"I wonder why the short one fights inna mask and a swirly cloak all the time," said Mal. "And with that silly rapier thingy."

"I expect they're gonna explain that one later," said Polly. "It seems a little impractical. Good thing she's, what does it say here, _faster than any other human and even a few demigods, even faster than the light._"

"'s not hard," said Mal. "Humans and light, that is; not sure about demigods."

"That's settled, then," said Polly. "She can just duck from under their broadswords and poke them afterwards. With her _rapier_."

"Awesome," said Mal. "Finally something that makes actual sense."

The clock stroke half past one. "Bedtime, Mal," Polly said, yawning stealthily. "There may be dragons tomorrow."

She'd be pretty sore after a night in this chair, she supposed. But she wasn't going to move now and anyway had promised Mal to stay. Something was still on her mind.

"So you're with her now," Polly said. after a while. Factually, she didn't think it held that much significance, but it seemed important to her at that point, and screw the reasons.

"I am with no-one," said Mal. "Usually works best, I find."

"Ah," said Polly, who decided she ultimately didn't understand the Clogston part of the equation but thought she could begin to understand the rest. She was, however, a little surprised to find that this wasn't even the number one priority on her mind. It took her at least another hour of not falling asleep in her chair to figure out that maybe some of the lack of answers was at least partly due to not getting the questions completely right.

"Mal," she said, when the moon had slipped so low it may hide completely behind the mountains any minute now. The light was already slowly retreating; it really was no challenge in terms of speed, she thought.

She'd guessed that the vampire was equally sleepless as she was. There was no answer, but she hadn't expected one.

"Mal, how do you _know_ his name's Antonin?" she asked.

There was definite stirring in the bed next to her armchair, and after a moment, Mal even sat up for the first time that night. So apparently this wasn't another near-death experience, not even close; just a temporary drawback with a bit of added faking. Polly caught her expression in the faint and fading light, carefully sculpted confusion superimposed on something else as Mal dragged her hands through her hair.

"I don't know, do I?" she said. "He must have mentioned it." But for all the triviality of the answer, the question must have troubled her somewhat and she sank back onto the bed. Polly thought of what Mal had said, that von Unterberg knew everything and knew it better than she did. There was a horror in that thought that she hadn't considered before.

And she was pretty sure that the answer didn't contain a polite introduction using a name that von Unterberg was clearly uncomfortable with.

"Mal," she said softly, "you said you figured it out. _You can tell me._"

The silence that followed stretched for so long that Polly thought Mal had fallen asleep or at least stopped talking to her. And then the light was gone, the room a more natural vampire habitat.

"I'm not sure yet," said Mal.

Polly watched her for a little while longer, but it became obvious the conversation was over.


	12. Chapter 12

"Enough with all the talk of getting better, chapter 12 will be the icing onna angstcake," (said the vampire to the sergeant). Thank you all for sticking with this story (I can seee you reading XD or clicking, at least). This is the last chapter. Last chance to review!

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**Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 12**

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A week had passed. Polly couldn't really remember why she had been looking for Mal in the first place, apart from the fact that Mal'd been gone for days, not resurfacing until late at night, if at all. It was the least military thing Polly had ever experienced, and she was curious.

Maybe her lack of success in locating Mal was because she'd spent the last three days thinking of places a vampire would go when they didn't want to be found. It was only today that Polly realised that possibly this wasn't the number one priority on the vampire's mind.

But what _was_?

Polly knew, of course. It'd just taken her a long time to realise Mal was, indeed, desperate enough to pursue this. And if she was not in her room and if she was not in the courtyard and if she was not up on the roof and if she was not down in the canteen with the lads and if she was not with Clogston -

The fort was supposed to be secure now. Still, Polly made sure to check her gun was loaded and her lamp filled with oil. The latter proved useful at once, as it turned out that the staircase down was barely lit by a skylight far above. The lower cellars weren't lit at all; the oil lamps lining the walls had long gone out, even before the Watch had first sealed the doors.

There was not a sign of vampire, not a sign that anyone had even been here in the last weeks. Clearly Polly had been mistaken, and Mal was elsewhere. What would she want down here, anyway? Relive all the happy memories?

It would have been a complete waste of perfectly good off-time, but there was something else Polly was looking for.

The cells all looked the same, and Polly realised she couldn't even remember which one it had been. But it turned out not to matter much. All the cells had been scrubbed clean, and what remained from the nightmare was a lingering smell of sharp chemicals.

She'd tried to remember if she'd seen a dead cat the last time she'd been down here, but the memory just wouldn't materialise itself. She supposed that was because she'd been otherwise engaged - she'd shot a man, she'd found Mal, and inbetween there'd just been no time nor attention left to register anything else.

She rewinded the memory for a few seconds back to when a gun had been aimed at her. She'd got at the man first, but only because he tripped over a thing that went miaow...

Oh _no_, she thought. But she knew there was more than one cat in this fort. She'd seen several. One was, just now, trotting along the corridor into the direction away from the staircase she'd come from, and it looked like any other of the cats she'd seen around here, especially in this darkness.

Polly opened a mental drawer, took out a notebook and a pen and began to tick off a list. _Try to remember if there was a dead cat_, check. _See if there is any further evidence in the cell_, check. _Find erratic vampire_, no check. But she hadn't looked everywhere yet.

Her footsteps in the corridor were louder than she'd thought - she'd taken her boots to a forgery the summer before and should probably be glad great there were no great big magnets in her way - and they were echoing across the whole length of it. That was what it must have sounded like to Mal when someone was approaching the cell, Polly thought. She remembered how the gunshots had resonated, wondering if this gloomy, sound-conductive architecture had happened on purpose.

The corridor turned out to have another right bend at the end, where it turned into another endless corridor. A door stood ajar just off the bend, and Polly went in to have a look around. This room, too, had been recently scrubbed wall to wall. Water had backed up in a drain in the floor, dipping just over the grid; and reflected the lamplight. A sickly, faintly familiar smell emanated from it. The room held a long, low bench made out of split wooden planks that looked freshly sandpapered. Rusted hooks were screwed to the walls and to the low ceiling; one of them held a neatly rolled up bulk of equally rusted chains. A row of cabinets were either empty or filled with random debris; one contained a row of mugs with nicknames on them and a bag of old, dusty tea leaves. Another held a glass jar full of nails, several empty bottles with their labels torn off, a pair of broken scissors, about a dozen long, wooden splinters tied together with a rubber band, and, neatly in a row, a set of seven keys.

Well, thought Polly, inspecting brownish sediments in a mug, nothing much in the way of evidence unless she wanted to get more imaginative than she currently wanted to.

"They were like that since before we arrived," said a voice behind her.

Polly's other hand had been on the gun all the time, and now she released the safety catch. Then she turned around.

"Oh, it's you," she said, and cocked the bit back. Lack of actual animosity aside, she didn't even want to imagine the diplomatic conundrum that would arise if she accidentally shot an Ankh-Morpork watch officer.

"The whole affair is really rather frustrating as far as factual evidence goes," said Angua. "They didn't leave anything to chance, did they? Exhibit B, vague smell of bleach."

Behind her, the door closed and all sounds were shut out. It made one want to talk just to fill this humming silence, thought Polly, who was glad to see there was an actual door handle on the inside as well.

"You could trust Mal," said Polly. "Actual eye witness, minus the - oh no, this lack of tact must be contagious."

Angua shrugged. "We probably trust him more than he trusts himself," she said. "But really, he _is_ exhibit A, isn't he? I always thought there was something fishy about those damn Uberwaldean vampires. Reformed my arse, and excuse the Klatchian."

"What do you _mean_?" said Polly.

Angua regarded her for a long moment. "Think about it," she said. "You have the time, cos we're leaving tomorrow."

"You can't leave just yet," said Polly, wishing she had the authority to say that with any prospect of success. "We still need a treaty."

"Oh, you have one," said Angua. "Since about thirty minutes ago. Lady Margolotta returned to insist some more, and suddenly everybody found it easy. See to it they're not doing something stupid with it, kiddo."

Polly hmpfed something in acknowledgment, figuring this was typical. Other people screwed up, and they did it so well and so reliably it may just be part of their job description. Her job was to make sure the glue stayed on, that everything was maybe not smooth but running. Like a bad buttercream icing.

Angua opened the door. "If you're looking for your vampire," she said, looking back, "he's at the end of the corridor."

Polly looked at her, hoping her facial expression wasn't as surly as it felt from the inside. "I knew that," she said.

Angua shrugged. "Sure you did. Hey, can you hook us up with the person who manufactures these guns?"

Polly pondered this. The truth was, she didn't really want anyone else to have guns. But it was spinning out of control already, what with the Uberwaldeans having got hold of the technology. And incidentally, she didn't trust her own army with the guns, either. She smiled. "My friend Lofty has an office in Ankh-Morpork," she said. "I'm sure you can figure it out."

Angua taxed her. "Ah," she said, and closed the door behind herself.

Polly gave Angua a minute's head start. She adjusted the lamp to burn a little lower; she hadn't thought she'd spent that much time down here.

The second corridor appeared even longer and narrower than the other one. The rooms down here weren't cells, though, from what Polly could see they were for maintenance of the fort's complicated pipe systems. One seemed to be a bathroom of sorts; there was water dripping from a row of leaking shower heads into stalls that were separated by lines painted on the floor. The water had pooled here, too, covering the floor in steep puddles. Their continuing occupation of the fort was soon going to overflow the lower cellars, Polly realised, unless someone figured out something clever with the plumbing. It didn't smell all that nice, either.

A few of the rooms seemed to be makeshift offices. _Only vampires_, Polly thought. They, too, had been abandoned tidily, not so much as a broken pencil or a stack of notes left behind, or files. There seemed to be another staircase at the end of this corridor, which was something of a relief; somehow Polly couldn't stomach the idea of someone passing the prisoners in their cells every morning in order to get to work.

As she got closer to the end of this corridor, a faint, metallic sound began to distinguish itself from the dripping water. It sounded utterly familiar to Polly, and reminded her more than anything of the day they'd arrived, when they'd heard the shooting noises in the cellar. Her step grew a tad more urgent.

Click, snap; pause.

Snap, slide, click; pause.

Repeat.

Polly was almost running when she reached the door to the last room, the 'almost' being due to a desperate attempt to not make any noise at all. She stopped dead in the doorframe, not knowing how to proceed.

The room held a table and two chairs and a nice carpet; a desk had been pushed to the wall. Several dried fir twigs were arranged in a porcelain vase on the floor, adorned with ribbons. The room was scarcely illuminated through a dirty cellar window just below the ceiling and by the faint light of Polly's lamp, just enough to make out the red in a sea of grey.

Click, snap; pause.

Polly held her breath because lots of practise meant she knew the safety catch was off (imagine Lofty designing something with a safety catch, her brain thought with sudden giddiness).

"It won't work on vampires," she said.

"I don't know about that," said Mal. "These things are pretty new, did anyone ever try?"

Polly made a step forward, but then Mal lifted her other hand, the one not currently playing with a potential lethal weapon, and Polly stopped where she was. For now. All she could see were Mal's tense shoulders over the back of her chair, her dark hair open and pouring long past the collar of her uniform. She hadn't brought her crutches, not that Polly could see; she'd really improved over the last few days. Or so Polly had thought.

No-one said anything for a long while, Polly all the while trying to think up ways to end this situation. She could take a leap for it. She'd almost certainly lose.

Polly craned her neck. A variety of things were laid out on the table in front of Mal, but it was too dark to make out details. There was a knife, a squarish shape that she thought could be Mal's lighter, but with the rest she was lost. A piece of string, maybe. The silence stretched on.

Snap, slide, click. _Safety catch on_. The sounds thundered in the pause that followed them, startling Polly, but she managed a tiny and brave step forward.

Click, snap. _Off_.

Pause. Polly recoiled, holding on to the doorframe.

Pause. She didn't want to have to stand here and watch this, and yet she didn't dare to come closer just now.

Pause. Not when Mal's grip on the gun was so hard it was shaking in her hand.

Pause. Not when it was such a short way from the muzzle to Mal's head.

She was going to say something, Polly was; the fact that the gun was for now still pointed at the ceiling had to mean something, but just when she thought she'd finally drawn enough breath Mal spoke.

"He said he was sorry and that he didn't have a choice," said Mal. "And I found out his name. Well-guessed, Pol."

An echo of a smooth vampire voice seemed to linger still in this nightmarish space, and for a moment Polly had the impression it wasn't Mal's. _Ich bin untröstlich, doch lasst Ihr mir keine andere Wahl._ She felt it almost physically, and tried to remember when she'd last seen Mal with a cup of coffee. It seemed to have been at least a week, but she hadn't seen Mal much in that time, either -

Mal used her free hand to shake out a cigarette out of a pack and lit up, inhaling deeply.

"He also said," she added, "that I could make it easier on myself if I cooperated. I knew he was lying. I knew he wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't comply, and yet I did. Why did I do that, Pol?"

"Dunno," said Polly, "I can think of a number of reasons."

"That was the day before you took the fort," said Mal. "Day thirty-seven. I decided I wasn't going to make it to day thirty-eight. He had the power to end it, and I hoped that if I could prove beyond a doubt that I didn't know anything else worth knowing, he would."

"But he didn't," said Polly.

Mal exhaled. "He did."

Polly watched her, tense in her chair, knees drawn up to her chest. It wasn't a big chair, but she was a short vampire. A draft came from somewhere, whirling up the smoke. Polly's best guess was that Mal wasn't going to pull the trigger before she'd smoked up.

"Put down the gun, Mal," said Polly.

Snap, slide, click. _On_. Mal threw a glance over her shoulder, but her face lay in shadow, Then she shrugged, put the gun down on the table with the rest of her assorted scraps, still very much in reach. Her now free hand went to play with the lighter instead.

The sounds were rather similar.

"Listen, Pol," she said. Then she didn't say anything for a long time, flame flickering on and off. Polly chose to remain standing in the doorframe for now, the half open door behind her; she didn't particularly want to face Mal now she had finally found her.

"What happened?" asked Polly. Further up the corridor, a door closed shut with a bang, the draft, she thought, and Mal winced at the sound, her breath shaking. But when she spoke, her voice was even again.

"He laughed," she said. "He _said_ he felt sorry for me and he _said_ he'd let me go, we're all ribboners after all, eh, but he inspected my memories and he loved them, day one to day thirty-seven, and then he found out that I really did lie to the guards about our army, and he laughed again and I had to laugh, too, because apparently that's the way this works, and he found out about you and turned it into another joke, and _I couldn't turn it back_."

Polly didn't really feel competent on the subject, so she said nothing. She could sense the flashsides on the edge of her conscious perception; a dark shadow that had been moving across the room and was now settling directly behind Mal, spidery shapes - finger-like - slithering on the skin of her neck until they found the pulse underneath, and a pressure like two glasses humming together, off by a fraction of a note that made all the difference in the world. To move, now, seemed impossible.

"He promised he'd make me forget," said Mal. "He could have made me enjoy it - the mind, complex and fascinating -, he could have made me remember something different. Instead he chose to make me forget it all. Isn't that a kind thing to do?"

"Clever, maybe," conceded Polly. "He helped no-one but himself, Mal."

"In any case, he messed it up," said Mal. "So quick and dirty it isn't even useful anymore. He cut it out from the things I call a past and it ended up everywhere but. Like when it starts raining, and there's the fucking showers again and I never got out. Like when I'm down here it means that I'm back then. And I'm not even sure if that's something he did or if it just came from him examining it all or if it all happened along the way and he just helped. Or maybe I did it myself. It could be a botched bit of self-defence; not like I can tell."

She flicked some ash off the cigarette and it fell to the floor, into a puddle that was seeping in from the corridor and starting to soak the nice carpet. "Like now," she said, "I'm not sure who you are. I know, of course, but am I convinced? All I can trust myself to sense is that there's someone behind me."

"Oh, for the love of -," said Polly, who thought they'd left the impostor theory long behind them. "Look at me. I don't know how else to prove it."

"Pol," said Mal softly, "I can't see anything when I'm down here."

The strange feeling that had kept Polly rooted to the spot lifted somewhat to allow for her curiousity. As she took a tentative step into this room, the door fell shut. To this sound, Mal barely reacted. Polly walked around her to look at her face.

It may have been a trick of the light, or a trick of the mind; in either case, Polly realised at once that it was a trick. And it was a good one; one that Mal apparently couldn't get out of.

"That's not real, Mal," she said, putting her lamp on the table.

"I know that," said Mal. She didn't look up; there was no point. "It's real in my head, which is where reality counts. Sit down."

The other chair, Polly noticed, held a grey tabby cat, fast asleep. She considered the imperative and removed the cat, which gave an affronted if tired growl. Polly sat down opposite Mal as instructed, but retaliated by stealing one of her cigarettes, held it.

"C'mon, Mal," she said, "before you used up all the oil."

Mal shrugged, made the flame spring up again and lit Polly's cigarette for her with, once again, perfect aim.

Polly inhaled, then got up once more to let out the cat, which had been sitting in front of the door with an offended air. "I guess they do all look alike, eh," she said.

"Possibly," said Mal in the tone of someone who could probably care less but would have to make a real effort.

"Why are you telling me all this?" said Polly.

"This is the only place where things sometimes make sense," said Mal. "Or, at least, fall together in a continuous fashion. I thought you were here because you were looking for me. And look, you found me, and this is who I am now. Happy?"

Polly gave some thought to that question, regarded the gun between them suspiciously. She knew Mal hadn't been issued with new bullets yet, no-one had; but she wasn't going to count on the gun not being loaded.

"Is it getting better?" she asked.

Mal shrugged once again. "Clearer," she said. It was most disconcerting to look into her face, which she remembered rather than saw. Polly's lamp had almost burnt down. It probably meant they had to feel their way upwards, but then again, this couldn't be that much creepier than Fort Kneck had been, could it?

"I went through your files before I left the camp," said Mal conversationally as she was dropping the end of her cigarette. She lit up a new one.

Polly thought about glaring at her, but supposed Mal was beyond caring about a superior's disapproval. "I rather thought they were a bit disorderly," she said. "And?"

"I knew you were to take up the vanguard in that battle," said Mal.

"Clogston's orders, 'cos we had the most practice with the guns," said Polly. "I couldn't tell you, you'd just have worried."

"Thought so," said Mal. "That was not the information Christine sent me off with, either. And when I was down here, I thought to myself, again and again, why would she lie to me about this when it's an information that the enemy couldn't possibly care less about? Which was when I figured out I couldn't possibly give up as fast as Christine apparently wanted me to, not when I thought it was your life at stake when they eventually attacked, dear sergeant. I thought there'd have to be a miracle."

"And you made one happen," said Polly.

"Silly," said Mal. "To think that I stayed there for you, held out for you, lied to them, for you, and at the time I was so sure I could do that and still love you afterwards; and then the why ceased to matter because I couldn't get away."

Polly's thoughts suddenly felt heavier. "I never asked you to do that," she said slowly. "I never would have. Please believe me."

"I know, Pol," said Mal. "But I did. I had to choose, I chose, and then I dealt with what came after that choice. Maybe there's someone in this world who's a bigger person than I am, but my love can't prosper in the presence of such sacrifice. It whimpers and dies. And so, I suppose, does yours, because I don't actually think you're a saint. Even though I like you a great deal, you know that."

"We've been through this before," said Polly. "Specifically, you are the one who keeps mentioning - who cannot stop poking at this, for Nuggan's sake."

"I wish it were different," said Mal. "I wish I could afford this comfort and I wish it could be with you, but I can't see it working. I hoped you would try to refute my reasoning on this at least once and I know I should be glad you're treating me like an adult, but I'm not. It's too much. I can't do it, and I hate that."

"Mal," said Polly, "Mal, it's painful for me, too. But how did you expect me to argue this?"

"Well, I don't know," said Mal, "I hoped you could think of a good reason. Romance isn't a bad thing, per se."

"But I can't talk you into it," said Polly. "It's creepy and I don't want to and it's creepy, Mal."

Mal sighed. "I know," she said. "Never said it wasn't doomed to work anyway."

"And you're right," said Polly. "Why should I be arguing? You're not the only one who has given up. I cannot possibly make up for this, and I don't feel like I _should_, and this is all so unfair I could scream."

"Well, feel free," said Mal. "No-one's going to hear you here."

"You know what I mean," said Polly.

"Course," said Mal, "It's unfair. It's unfair to me, it's unfair to you, only no-one ever asks you how you feel about this all except me when I want to drive home some point, and I'm sorry but I can't deal with that either, but I suggest you find someone who can."

Polly nodded slowly. She'd guessed that it would go something like this, but still it seemed unimaginable. That there could be someone else. That her vampire wasn't going to be by her side forever.

"Okay," she said, deciding to change this dreadful topic once and for all. "Okay. What is going to happen to von Unterberg?" Another dreadful topic. the surroundings were apparently not conducive to non-dreadful conversation.

She was met with a thin smile. "Oh, the League will take care of him," said Mal. "If they won't, I will. I'm keeping the gun."

Polly regarded the gun. She'd rather Mal wouldn't. "Y'know," she said, "good luck with that and all, but I must remind you there are subtle differences between justice, revenge, and murder."

"And I'm sure Lady Margolotta will honour it," said Mal. "I won't. I don't know what kind of personal growth you expect from me under the circumstances. To me it's all the same." She sighed. "All right, Sergeant Goody-Two-Shoes, I'm planning to give Margolotta a rather lengthy chance first, actually."

Polly nodded. "Good," she said, and then no-one said anything anymore for a while. There were exactly two cigarettes left in the pack. They'd almost smoked them down to the crumbly end before Polly decided to face the inevitable.

"So I guess this is goodbye now," said Polly. It was a guess but not lucky, and in any case, Mal had said she'd leave when she got well enough.

"It won't be forever," said Mal. "But it will be for a pretty long time."

"You are more immortal than I am," observed Polly.

"Not that long," said Mal. "I hope."

There was an undercurrent beneath all this, but Polly didn't know what it meant. Maybe Mal wanted her to argue the point, to fight. Maybe Mal wanted her to let her go in peace. But even with all the talking during the last weeks, Polly couldn't remember ever voicing what she herself wanted, except in small, necessity-driven ways. Maybe it was time.

"You don't have to leave on my behalf," she said.

There was a pause. Mal stubbed out the cigarette end that must have been scorching her fingers already. "That's not what I'm doing," she remarked.

"Well, good," said Polly. "I mean, obviously you may leave for whatever reason you like, which considering this is the army is a somewhat novel concept but bear with me for a moment -"

"What are you getting at, sarge?" said Mal.

"To reiterate my point: you don't have to leave just because we can't get this thing to work," said Polly. "Y'know, I'm not even sure how relevant this is to your motivation. But here's how it is. I can deal with it not happening. I don't know if I could deal with cutting off _all_ ties, _forever_."

"Polly Perks," said Mal. "Are you suggesting we might be _friends_?"

"It's not that revolutionary," said Polly, stubbing out her own cigarette, which had lasted longer because she wasn't quite as compulsory a smoker as Mal was.

There was a pause. Eventually, it passed. "Oh," said Mal. "Okay."

"So what are you going to do with your time?" asked Polly. "I'm probably free until spring." Polly was actually looking forward to this; she had some leave coming up and three glorious months of not being shot at and sleeping in tents, and after that, three glorious years of reassuringly boring classrooms, fencing lessons and theoretical essays on tactical warfare. And after that, the all-important Lt. in front of her name. She might be going places.

"The replacement girl is turning twenty-one this year," said Mal, which rather surprised her. "So I think I'm going to pay my family a visit. Make sure everyone is properly informed on their choices in case it isn't already too late. Bring a few pamphlets in case it is. I believe a self-discovery trip would be more in order, but I can't help the timing."

Vampires were weird, thought Polly, and tried to parse the meaning of the term 'replacement girl'. It sounded vaguely dehumanising, and quite suddenly she was reminded of the way Father Jupe - and almost everybody from Munz - talked about the girls at the Grey House. "Would that be your younger sister?" Polly asked.

"Best not to attach too much meaning to these things," said Mal. The flame sprung up and went out once more. "It only leads to self-sacrifice. Let's not talk about this anymore, shall we?"

After that, there were only sparks. They'd have to lacate a pack of matches or stop smoking now.

Polly thought of what she knew about Ilsa Bátoriová, Mal's mother, the castle in the Borogravian highmoor; and how, at least in the absence of actual matricide, escape meant that somehow, somewhere, another little human girl would go missing. Nobody ever won, except Ilsa.

The stories about them were kind to the girls. They ate off golden plates every day. They had all the toys a child could ever wish for, the prettiest dresses. They had playmates, soft acquiescent illusions that vanished into a cupboard when they went to bed. The spent no conscious minute alone. They were the most pampered children in the world, until they grew up.

"That's a daft course to follow, Mal," she said.

"Yes," said Mal. "But it's mine."

That was when the lamp went out and the world went black. Polly felt in every fibre that panic was an option, but, surprised, she found the feeling passed. Some stray light from the setting sun still found its way inside, but didn't actually illuminate anything. She and Mal were now on equal footing; they'd have to go some of the way together.

"Don't worry," said a voice in the dark, and Mal got up to take her hand. "I know the way up."


End file.
